A special NEHA benefit.

I was reading the managing editor's column in my local newspaper the other day. How interesting. This particular managing editor wrote about a poor community in Ethiopia. He explained that every morning, a number of the people within this community would gather at a different home and drink coffee together. They would share news and talk about events in their community. The next day they would move on to another home where the ritual was repeated.

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He likened this routine to the morning breakfast table in America, where many people sit down and read the daily newspaper. Then he went on to suggest that the newspaper provided the reader with the same sense of connection to his or her community that the coffee group did in Ethiopia. The newspaper, he pointed out, served to connect readers with the other people of their community. It also gave each reader important information about what was going on and what was being said, thought, and experienced in the community at large.

The lesson in this little story was the insight that members of any community seek to be connected both to other members and to the events, experiences, and thoughts of the community at large.

Much like the communities in which we live, there is a community within our profession. People who practice environmental health define a community. One of NEHA's responsibilities as the professional society that undergirds this community is to provide each member of it with that same sense of connection that the newspaper and coffee group provide. We take this special responsibility very seriously. It is one of the reasons for why we design fellowship experiences into the annual educational conference (AEC), periodically contact you through e-mail blasts, sponsor an awards program, and provide you with a regular Journal. These vehicles, among others, help to build and enhance your connections to the wider community of which you are a part.

Recently--as in about a year and a half ago--we took this all one step further with what is arguably one of the more unusual programs we offer. I say that because I know of no other professional association that has employed a reporter simply to report on the issues that affect its profession and community. NEHA has done that.

As most of you know by now, we employ Rebecca Berg, who has a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, as our Journal reporter. (She also edits and proofs the Journal.) Rebecca hunts out stories that enable us to probe who we are, what we are, what we think, and so forth. Through her articles, we have learned a great deal about what this profession is all about, just as we have learned so much more about the environmental health community that we make up. I sincerely believe that her exceptional articles serve to bind all of us--which was one of the objectives in bringing her on board.

Through some of the articles that she has written thus far, we've gained deeper understandings of ourselves, our experiences, our dramas, and our dreams as a community. More specifically, we've picked up fascinating insights into what makes us different from environmentalists (e.g., our affinity for epidemiology as opposed to theirs for toxicology), what the boundary is between science and politics (which, interestingly enough, might be a mirage in that one's person's politics may be another person's science and vice versa), and how close we might actually be to living on pins and needles in our daily work life (as illustrated in her article on the Northeast blackout, which initially had many of our practitioners believing it was the beginning stage of a terrorist attack).

All of these insights enable us to feel more connected to our story as a whole and to the entire practicing community of environmental health.

If through this "special NEHA benefit" we have afforded you a closer connection with the people and stories that comprise the community you are a part of, then we have succeeded in meeting one of the most important responsibilities that we have. And if by chance you are new to NEHA or just haven't yet found your way to one of Rebecca's articles, I would urge you to take a look. She is an exceptional writer and a great researcher. But more than that, her special program offers every NEHA member a way to satisfy your need to be connected. We can only hope that you are taking advantage of that!

Nelson Fabian, M.S.