Walter F. Snyder - the legacy of a leader in environmental health.

A personal reflection: It was truly an honor to be recognized at the NEHA Annual Educational Conference in Las Vegas as the recipient of the Walter E Snyder Award. The Snyder Award, established by NSF International and cosponsored by NEHA, is one of two awards presented at the AEC Presidents banquet. The sense of satisfaction that comes from making a contribution to one's profession is never greater than when the contribution is recognized by one's peers. I want to extend my thanks to all those with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned who were not able to be in Las Vegas. Many of my accomplishments, as I acknowledged when I accepted the reward, are the result of teamwork. My coworkers, other associates, and I worked together to solve problems, provide services, and represent our profession.

Since the conference in Las Vegas, I have taken the time to learn more about Walter Snyder and to read some of his speeches from the 1950s. Time has not diminished the relevance of his wisdom. I believe it would benefit us all to revisit his legacy.

Walter E Snyder was a leader in his time, but he was also a man who thought beyond his time. In 1944, with colleagues Henry Vaughan and Nathan Sinai, he founded the National Sanitation Foundation in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. Their goal was to advance the field of sanitation through research and collaboration. Those principles still provide the foundation for NSF International.

Back when the nation was beginning to contemplate command-and-control regulation, Walter Snyder was thinking about how to develop consensus through the collaboration of industry, its customers, and government. He was expressing his views about communities and public health, the role of the sanitarian (or the environmental health specialist in today's terminology), the importance both of prevention and of cure for environmental health problems, and the need for both natural sciences and social sciences in public health.

In a talk presented in 1950 about sanitation and the way Americans live, Mr. Snyder expressed one of his fundamental principles about the role of government in community problem solving:

In a democracy, governments and health departments do not mold a population into a cultural pattern by directives, regardless of their technical validity. The most effective role of a public health official in influencing permanent environmental changes is that of a democratic leader who helps community and neighborhood groups to study their problems and seek a solution which they can, in turn, carry out.

The sanitarian's job, according to Walter Snyder, was to enforce laws and regulations and to educate the public about environmental health and protection. That education would enable communities to make good choices that would protect the quality of the life they chose. Specifically, he believed that "when and if we ever have a clean city in the United States, it will be because the people of that city want it to be clean." For many years, environmental health professionals have struggled to win compliance with applicable rules and regulations. It was Snyder's view that the definition of clean would be developed by consensus of all the parties who had a stake in the outcome. In this case, the parties would include citizens, businesses, and government agencies. Mr. Snyder's writings suggest he recognized that while command and control have value, it is also useful to encourage voluntary action that demonstrates environmental responsibility. For the work of the environmental health professional to be successful, the community has to value public health protection and be willing to commit resources to achieve that goal.

It has only been recently that environmental regulators and businesses have embraced the concept of environmental leadership while reducing emphasis on the command-and-control approach to compliance. Walter Snyder and his colleagues would support this evolutionary step. Environmental health professionals are now taking on the role of consultants, and agencies are working with businesses in a more proactive way to transcend the concept of compliance and to foster a corporate culture that accepts responsibility for protecting human health and the environment. Walter Snyder's writing suggests he did not believe it was the job of government to drag the recalcitrant businessman into compliance.

In another speech to environmental health professionals, Mr. Snyder addressed the need for leadership that would encourage the evolution and maturation of the professional sanitarian. The following excerpt from that speech resonates with discussions heard in recent years at NEHA meetings:

The sanitation worker who will make a contribution in the future is not one who is waiting for the so-called ... rules of sanitation to be handed to him on a silver platter. The challenge in the field is one which calls for initiative, pioneering, aggressiveness ....

In the debate about the relevance of the term sanitarian, Snyder would likely have taken the side of those who favored change to a term that has a more contemporary meaning. He saw the need for constant attention to new knowledge and concepts and for adjustment to change. The sign of a diminished rate of personal growth, in his view, was the tendency to resist change and emphasize past achievements while current and future problems multiplied. He believed that by the 1950s the profession of sanitation had developed a certain unhealthy rigidity. That rigidity may have contributed to what some have suggested was the demise of the sanitarian and the need for the reinvented environmental health professional.

Snyder's concern for the profession was related to his overall view of the field. He believed that the natural sciences and the social sciences were both integral to improving quality of life through the practice of environmental health: "Are we limiting our profession by picturing sanitation as a technique, an ordinance, an individual, or an organization, instead of thinking of sanitation as a means of man living with man?" He would have endorsed what we now refer to as thinking "out of the box." The practice of environmental health consists of more than running through a checklist of compliance items. It also involves understanding context and other factors that influence health protection.

Walter Snyder believed that environmental health professionals needed to be aware of their tendency to emphasize the negative aspect of their work - that is, the identification of what he referred to as "sick areas," which necessitate laws, ordinances, and rules to reduce the potential for illness and injury. The focus on characterizing risk, enumerating violations of laws and regulations, and finding environmental health problems works well in certain areas. In the "well areas," however, the need is for education about how to maintain quality. Snyder contrasted these approaches, calling them "curative sanitation" and "preventive sanitation." His premise was that public health involved not only the absence of disease, but also the development of positive health. Repeatedly, he spoke about the importance of assessing need in communities and then implementing strategies that recognize their own scientific and social bases. Today, community health needs assessment is receiving increasing attention among public health professionals as a means of more effectively deploying resources to improve community protection and quality of life.

The concept of community health needs assessment is further enhanced by Snyder's insight about the social fabric of communities. Environmental health policy makers have emphasized the need for sound science. Walter Snyder suggested that an understanding of community values is equally important. The public is entitled to know what it is getting for its tax dollars, he said, and to understand the expected result in terms of value for the community. Citizens must be able to evaluate what environmental control means for their own security, social relationships, and personal health and safety. The value for the cost must be apparent.

Walter E Snyder recognized the complexity of the intersection of health and the environment. Inherent in that complexity is the tension between the quantitative aspect of the natural sciences and the qualitative features of social science. He believed that the balance between risk and community values could be achieved through consensus building and dialogue, in a forum that included all stakeholders.

The consensus standards process that Snyder and his colleagues envisioned remains the foundation of NSF International today and has evolved through 54 years of a changing regulatory environment. Furthermore, the regulatory system is moving from a command-and-control approach to a more collaborative system of environmental protection. Examples include the use of regulatory negotiation to establish greater consensus between regulatory agencies and the regulated community, voluntary pollution prevention, and other similar efforts. Walter Snyder would be pleased.

Mr. Snyder passed away in 1965, but we are reminded of his vision and his wisdom each year when the award bearing his name is presented at the NEHA Annual Educational Conference. What was said in 1950 still carries a message to the environmental health professional in 1998.