Air quality, water safety, and a warming climate do not stop at a clinic door — they shape health outcomes long before anyone becomes a patient. Yet environmental risk is still too often treated as a separate issue from health policy, when in practice the two are inseparable: weak environmental regulation shows up years later as rising rates of respiratory disease, vector-borne illness, and health inequity.

The Shaping Health Policy Through Environmental Action training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy gives participants the tools to bring environmental health considerations directly into policy design — from legislation and risk assessment to advocacy that holds up under real political and budgetary constraints.

Participants leave with practical skills for shaping policies that protect health, promote environmental sustainability, and address the disparities that leave some communities more exposed than others.

Course Objectives

• Understand how environmental health touches urban health, waterborne disease, air pollution, and occupational safety.
• Examine the role environmental health legislation plays in shaping public policy and driving interventions like waste management and pollution control.
• Apply health impact assessment (HIA) and risk assessment tools to evaluate environmental risks to community health.
• Build advocacy strategies that strengthen environmental health governance at local, national, and global levels.
• Address environmental justice directly, ensuring vulnerable communities are protected rather than overlooked.

Who Should Attend?

• Public health professionals and epidemiologists who need to connect environmental health with health policy.
• Policy makers, government officials, and advocacy groups shaping environmental regulation.
• Environmental health practitioners, regulatory staff, and occupational health professionals.
• Researchers, healthcare providers, and environmental advocates working across the environment-health divide.

The course opens with the climate and justice pressures pushing environmental health onto the policy agenda, then works through the legislation, tools, and evidence needed to respond.

Module 1: Why Environmental Risk Belongs on the Policy Agenda

• Defining environmental health and its direct significance for public health outcomes.
• Key risks: hazardous waste exposure, toxicology, and pollution control.
• How public policy mitigates environmental health risk and promotes healthier environments.

Module 2: Climate Change, Cities and Environmental Justice

• The relationship between climate change and public health, including vector-borne and waterborne disease.
• How environmental health shapes urban populations through air pollution and sustainable development.
• Environmental justice: addressing disparities in disadvantaged communities.

Module 3: Laws and Regulations Shaping Environmental Health

• National and international regulations — air quality standards, waste management, climate adaptation.
• Crafting health policies that address environmental risk and promote sustainability.
• Case studies of effective environmental regulation, from urban planning to green infrastructure.

Module 4: Assessing Risk and Turning It Into Advocacy

• Risk assessment methods, including health impact assessment (HIA) and environmental health surveillance.
• Public health interventions addressing water safety, air quality, and community engagement.
• Techniques for advocating stronger environmental health regulation and green health policy.

Module 5: Evidence and Research Behind Environmental Health Policy

• The role of research in shaping environmental health policy and sustainable health systems.
• Tools and strategies for analyzing public health policy and identifying disparities.

Module 6: What Comes Next — Innovation and Global Sustainability Goals

• Aligning public health policy with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
• Emerging trends: green infrastructure, health education, and the role of environmental protection agencies.
• New technologies and innovations in environmental health governance and climate adaptation.