[babystrangeloop]

PEAK PETROLEUM AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Peak Oil, Food Systems, and Public Health
Roni A. Neff, PhD, MS, Cindy L. Parker, MD, Frederick L. Kirschenmann, PhD, Jennifer Tinch, MD, MPH and Robert S. Lawrence, MD
AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Jul 21, 2011

Roni A. Neff and Robert S. Lawrence are with the Center for a Livable Future and Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Cindy L. Parker is with the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Baltimore. Frederick L. Kirschenmann is with the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, and the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY. At the time of the study Jennifer Tinch was with the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Correspondence: Correspondence should be sent to Roni A. Neff, Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N Wolfe St, W7010, Baltimore, MD 21205 (e-mail: rneff{at}jhsph.edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the "Reprints/Eprints" link.

Peak oil is the phenomenon whereby global oil supplies will peak, then decline, with extraction growing increasingly costly. Today's globalized industrial food system depends on oil for fueling farm machinery, producing pesticides, and transporting goods. Biofuels production links oil prices to food prices.

We examined food system vulnerability to rising oil prices and the public health consequences. In the short term, high food prices harm food security and equity. Over time, high prices will force the entire food system to adapt. Strong preparation and advance investment may mitigate the extent of dislocation and hunger.

Certain social and policy changes could smooth adaptation; public health has an essential role in promoting a proactive, smart, and equitable transition that increases resilience and enables adequate food for all.

[babystrangeloop]

Dr. Roni Neff's Presentation to York, Pa., School Board
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp70aoZMkjs
It's an older, unrelated presentation but it gives you a feel for what kind of person she is.

[babystrangeloop]

A blog article about the report in the first post in this thread:

Preparing for Peak Oil
Christine Grillo / July 22, 2011

... Today the American Journal of Public Health has published online ahead of print “Peak Petroleum and Public Health,” as part of a special AJPH supplement, to be published in September, that will examine peak oil health threats.This paper, co-authored by CLF faculty Roni Neff, PhD, Robert Lawrence, MD, and colleagues, makes the case for pre-emptive changes that can help public health adapt—ahead of the curve—to the inevitable.“Certain social and policy changes could smooth adaptation. Public health has an essential role in promoting a proactive, smart, and equitable transition that increases resilience and enables adequate food for all,” write the authors. ...

... In the AJPH paper, lead author Neff and colleagues identify four food system adaptations likely to occur as oil prices escalate: reduced oil in food production; increased food system energy efficiency and renewable energy; changed food consumption patterns; and reduced food transportation distances. ...

... Neff says , “Peak oil is off most people’s radar.Few in the public health community think about it, never mind about how its impacts may be magnified when combined with other ecological threats we face.Yet, the hunger and public health toll could be devastating, particularly if we fail to take action in advance to begin shifting our food systems.This is our window of opportunity.” ...

[babystrangeloop]

Back in 2009 Cindy Parker, co-author of the report, was a speaker at conference. In 2010 she continued to lecture.

"After Peak Oil" conference at Johns Hopkins March 12
Energy Bulletin / February 17, 2009

Johns-Hopkins Center for Public Health preparedness
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

This conference, sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness, will address the linkages between peak oil, climate change, our built environment, and the public’s health. Special focus will be paid to identifying the consequences as well as envisioning solutions and building resistance to what will be a great threat to public health.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett ‐ Congressman Bartlett has demonstrated his leadership and his concern about peak oil by becoming a founding member of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus. As one of three scientists in the Congress, Dr. Bartlett is also a senior member of the Science Committee and specifically uses his science knowledge on the Energy and the Environment as well as the Research and Science Education subcommittees.

Howard Frumkin, MD, MPH, DrPH - Dr. Frumkin, Director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, considers Peak Oil a major threat to the public’s health. He recently coauthored a comprehensive article on the topic in the January issue of Public Health Reports titled Energy and Public Health: The Challenge of Peak Petroleum.

... skip ...

Economic and Societal Impacts of Peak Oil
Cindy Parker, MD, MPH
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

... snip ...

Link to Johns Hopkins page for that conference

Ms. Cindy Parker, Bloomberg School of Public Health
ASPO USA 2010 Peak Oil Conference

Cindy Parker is on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she co-directs the Program on Global Sustainability and Health. She is also an Instructor in the Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences where she directs the new undergraduate major in Global Environmental Change and Sustainability. Her professional interests include education, policy work, practice, and research on the global environmental topics of climate change, peak petroleum, and global sustainability. As part of her desire to educate the public and policy makers about the health effects of global climate change, she is a frequent speaker on the topic and recently co-authored Climate Chaos: Your Health at Risk (2008). Dr. Parker received her MD from the University of Arizona and her Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is board certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine where she is Co-Chair of the Environmental Health Committee. She also serves on the National Board of Directors for Physicians for Social Responsibility.

[babystrangeloop]

Another paper from Johns Hopkins U in Baltimore, MD this year.

PEAK PETROLEUM AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Peak Oil and Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Impacts and Potential Responses
Peter Winch, MD, MPH, and and Rebecca Stepnitz, MHS
AJPH First Look, published online ahead of print Jul 21, 2011

Peter Winch is with the Social and Behavioral Interventions Program, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Rebecca Stepnitz is with the Center for Injury Research & Policy, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Correspondence: Correspondence should be sent to Peter Winch, MD, MPH, Professor and Director, Social and Behavioral Interventions Program, Associate Chair, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Room E5533, 615 North Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205-2103 (e-mail: pwinch{at}jhsph.edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the "Reprints/Eprints" link.

Peak oil refers to the predicted peak and subsequent decline in global production of petroleum products over the coming decades. We describe how peak oil will affect health, nutrition, and health systems in low- and middle-income countries along 5 pathways.

The negative effects of peak oil on health and nutrition will be felt most acutely in the 58 low-income countries experiencing minimal or negative economic growth because of their patterns of sociopolitical, geographic, and economic vulnerability.

The global health community needs to take additional steps to build resilience among the residents of low- and middle-income countries and maintain access to maternal and other health services in the face of predicted changes in availability and price of fossil fuels.

Another blog article to go with it.

Running on empty?
by Michael Anft / Johns Hopkins Magazine / February 28, 2011

If you believe academics who practice the science of public health, the work of people like them is responsible for increasing the world’s population from around 500 million, where it had been stuck for centuries following the plagues of the Middle Ages, to 7 billion today. Proponents of this thinking, including Alfred Sommer, a storied professor and senior associate dean at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, point to the field’s many breakthroughs in containing diseases and providing food, clean water, antibiotics, and vitamin regimens to even the poorest people around the world. Emphasis on improving health care access, hygiene, and prevention, so the thinking goes, explains modern humanity’s dominion over the planet. ...

... In an article to be published later this year in the American Journal of Public Health, Peter Winch, SPH ’88, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Bloomberg School, warns that the gains made by public health in the past century may slowly be rolled back as oil becomes progressively more scarce and expensive. What’s more, as the nations of the world increasingly scrape for petroleum, scientists who believe that saving lives is worth any amount of available grant money may have to change their thinking.

“A lot of people believe that our basic M.O. will stay the same,” says Winch. “But there’s no way it will. We have to recalibrate what we’re doing in the field. Just getting people thinking about what will happen when oil is scarce is a challenge.” He sees the energy issue as one that decision makers in public health should take more seriously, as they already do in regard to climate change and degradation of the environment. “The way public health uses liquid energy is part of a problem that threatens to increase mortality,” Winch says, arguing that using energy as in the past will contribute to future shortages that may affect the nutritional health of people in poor countries. “We should be working to prevent such a sudden threat, which means we should stop relying so heavily on a resource that is becoming rapidly depleted,” he says.

Winch recommends that public health hospitals and research stations in poor countries reinstitute low-energy natural ventilation systems and reintroduce surgical supplies that can be easily sterilized and reused. He says foreign aid organizations and universities should factor in dwindling amounts of fuel when planning public health interventions and reduce their reliance on air travel. He says that some programs, such as ones that work to minimize threats to a birthing mother’s health, should more often be constructed so that local people can run and maintain them using less energy.

... Although Winch doesn’t foresee mass die-offs from a shortage of fossil fuel, he says the results will be devastating over the longer term. “What we might experience is analogous to what we’ve seen from HIV/AIDS in Africa,” He says. “We’re more likely to see life expectancies diminish. People will start dying younger.”

Winch’s paper will be published in a special peak oil supplement of the American Journal of Public Health, to be edited by another Bloomberg professor, Brian Schwartz, and assistant professor Cindy Parker. Schwartz says the fallout from the emergence of peak oil won’t be limited to the bottom billion. “We’ll see recessions that come from oil price shocks, to be followed by growth. Then, the price of oil will go up because of increased demand, and the process will repeat itself. What happens during recessions? Politicians cut budgets, which would lead to fewer clinics and vaccinations. Public health will suffer even in wealthier nations.”

[ritter]

Interesting articles. I have family in the medical field. They have no concept of peak oil. Climate change and peak oil will prove quite a challenge to the medical field in the coming years.