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Awarded to Michael Lerner
Presented annually, the CleanMed
Environmental Health Hero Award recognizes an individual whose
professional accomplishments have significantly contributed to
advances in environmental health science or policy. The award is
given to someone whose achievements have both deepened our
understanding of the critical links between health and the
environment; and have catalyzed tangible policy or research
reforms that protect human health and the environment.
This year, CleanMed gratefully recognizes
Michael Lerner, PhD, with its Environmental Health Hero award.
He is president and co-founder of Commonweal, a health and
environmental research institute on the edge of the Pacific in
Bolinas, California; and of Smith Farm Center for Healing and
the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Michael Lerner, PhD, President,
Commonweal
Michael Lerner's life work has focused on
the intersection of human health and the health of the earth.
Founded in 1976, Commonweal has a dozen major programs that
include work with at-risk children, people with cancer, health
professionals, ocean policy reform, permaculture gardening, and
environmental public health.
The Commonweal Cancer Help Program, for
example, has provided week-long retreats for cancer patients for
23 years. The program was featured by Bill Moyers in his
award-winning PBS series "Healing and the Mind."
Throughout his career, Michael has helped to
found important efforts that link the health of people and the
environment. These include the Collaborative on Health and the
Environment, an international partnership of 3000 individuals
and organizations dedicated to bringing the best environmental
health science to the patient and health professional community;
and Health Care Without Harm, the influential campaign for
environmentally responsible health care.
He has played a leading role in organizing
consensus statements on environmental factors in cancer
causation, and was a longtime member of the CEO Advisory Board
of the American Cancer Society. He served as Chief Consultant to
the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress for its
landmark report “Unconventional Cancer Treatments.”
Michael is the author of "Choices in
Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary
Approaches to Cancer" from MIT Press, widely regarded as the
first major effort to take an objective approach to integrative
cancer therapies. He received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for
contributions to public health in 1983.
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