Integrating Human Health and Environmental Health into the DPSIR Framework: A Tool to Identify Research Opportunities for Sustainable and Healthy Communities

Abstract

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recently realigned its research enterprise around the concept of sustainability. Scientists from across multiple disciplines have a role to play in contributing the information, methods, and tools needed to more fully understand the long-term impacts of decisions on the social and economic sustainability of communities. Success will depend on a shift in thinking to integrate, organize, and prioritize research within a systems context. We used the Driving forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework as a basis for integrating social, cultural, and economic aspects of environmental and human health into a single framework. To make the framework broadly applicable to sustainability research planning, we provide a hierarchical system of DPSIR keywords and guidelines for use as a communication tool. The applicability of the integrated framework was first tested on a public health issue (asthma disparities) for purposes of discussion. We then applied the framework at a science planning meeting to identify opportunities for sustainable and healthy communities research. We conclude that an integrated systems framework has many potential roles in science planning, including identifying key issues, visualizing interactions within the system, identifying research gaps, organizing information, developing computational models, and identifying indicators.

The science and politics of human well-being: a case study in cocreating indicators for Puget Sound restoration

“…(Beyer and Trice 1982:608) The well-being of human communities is inextricably linked to the health of the earth's biophysical environment (Yee et al 2012. Humans rely on nature for physical, economic, and cultural benefits (Daily 1997), while ecosystems across the globe are influenced by human actions (Collins et al 2011).…”

“…This acknowledgement is the foundation of the term "social-ecological systems" (Ostrom 2009). The key to managing for healthy social-ecological systems is to effectively integrate environmental, economic, and societal needs, combining the specificity of science with the holistic nature of community decision making (Yee et al 2012). …”

“…Scientific data is widely recognized as a critical component for monitoring and predicting future trends of ecosystem health and developing appropriate management strategies (Yee et al 2012). However, although ecological indicators have been well established for many regions (e.g., National Research Council 2000), social indicators specific to conservation have been under debate.…”

A conceptual model to assess stress‐associated health effects of multiple ecosystem services degraded by disaster events in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere

“…Therefore, we adopted and modified concepts from several existing frameworks and incorporated them into a more comprehensive and novel model that explicitly identifies and emphasizes the human health consequences that are due to the disaster's effects on the environmental benefits on which people and communities depend. We chose the model of Kelble et al [2013], augmented with information from Yee et al [2012], Bradley and Yee [2015], and other sources as the basis for the environmental-ecosystem service components of our framework. Foundation blocks for the human health and well-being elements of our model were the mental health impacts diagram of Palinkas [2012Palinkas [ , 2015, the Eco-Health DPSIR model of Bradley and Yee [2015], and the allostatic load (AL)-chronic stress model of McEwen and Stellar [1993] and McEwen [1998aMcEwen [ , 1998bMcEwen [ , 2000.…”

Sustainability within the Academic EcoHealth Literature: Existing Engagement and Future Prospects

“…One article used "EcoHealth as a transdisciplinary lens" to investigate the linkage between sustainable livelihoods and ecosystem health" [74]. One article applied the Driving forces-Pressures-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework "for integrating social, cultural, and economic aspects of environmental and human health into a single framework" [104].…”