Make the right choice the easy choice.

Interview with Alan Balch, vice president of the Preventative Health Partnership on the intersection between public health and environmental health:

What do you see as the greatest commonalities between the preventative health movement and the environmental sustainability movement?

There has long been a clear intersection between public health and environmental health, especially when you consider issues like air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution. Most of the federal and state laws in those areas are first and foremost designed to protect people's health. In terms of the sustainability movement, I think those issues have become increasingly more congruent with the preventive health agenda in recent years.

The big push now in preventive and public health is "healthy communities." Numerous organizations from the government, academic, nonprofit, and private sectors are rallying around this theme. Although the specific tactics being pursued at the local level vary from place to place, some activities that the preventative health movement has in common with the sustainability movement include:

• Local fruit and vegetable production and consumption through home gardens, farmers markets, and farm-to-school programs;
  


• creation and expansion of bike lanes, sidewalks, and walking paths to create "walkable cities, schools, and shopping";
  


• reducing or eliminating the use of toxic chemicals in cleaning products in public institutions; and
  


• preservation or creation of parks and open space for multiple use.
  

In your view, what are the most effective practical ways to empower people to make the “right” choices, whether for their personal health and well-being, or for the environment? Does conventional advertising work, or do we need to adopt new tactics?


The answer is as simple conceptually as it is elusive from a practical perspective: make the right choice the easy choice. We've created an economic culture that is based on immediate gratification, convenience, and irrationality. Many people want to be more conscious consumers both for their personal health and environmental health, but those issues are not necessarily top of mind at the point of consumption and, if they are, it might not be readily apparent how to exercise those preferences quickly and in the context of other factors that drive consumer behavior.

Messaging or advertising is not effective unless it is used to drive people to resources, tools, and products that make it easier for them to express their long-term preferences for deferred benefits like better health.

To me, there are four interrelated strategies for creating real change, and I think the geo-political focus for these should be at the local and community level and not the federal level:

Built environment: look for opportunities to change or create permanent infrastructure in a way that supports the behaviors you want changed or reinforced.

Policy: look for opportunities to create policies at the government and corporate level that either make it easier to make the right choice or harder to make the less preferable choice.

Programs: institute programs that provide people with the capacity or pathway to making the right choice.

Partner: find other active groups to work with who have a similar or same agenda even if their concerns are different.