PROBLEM: Health professionals are typically required to meet a certain number of Continuing Education (CE) credit hours to maintain their professional certifications. These can be expensive and sometimes require travel to meetings and conferences.
SOLUTION: PEHSU created A Story of Health series, which is a free, online and asynchronous eBook, comprised of six chapters on health conditions and diseases authored by leaders in the environmental health field with free Continuing Education offered to health professionals by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
IMPACT: A Story of Health is featured in numerous publications and websites, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the National Library of Medicine to the book Environmental Health Literacy, and was honored by the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s (ATSDR) with its “Excellence in Communications” Award in 2015. Chapters include those on asthma, developmental disabilities, infertility and reproductive health, childhood cancer, cognitive decline and the health effects of wildfires. To date, more than 25,000 health professionals have registered for CE credits through this series. This resource was a collaboration among WS PEHSU, Commonweal, the Science and Environmental Health Network, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) at California EPA, and the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment (CIRCLE) at UC Berkeley.