AIBS Executive Director's Weekly Blog

When I arrived at AIBS in 1997, the Committee for the National Institute for the Environment (CNIE) was already in full swing, having been founded in 1990 to improve the scientific basis for environmental decisionmaking. By 2000, CNIE had transformed into the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE--an acronym, by the way, that is shared with another of AIBS's good friends, the National Center for Science Education.

AIBS has worked with CNIE / NCSE over the years, and this year it's a special pleasure to see that both organizations are making climate science a focus of their annual meetings in Washington DC. NCSE's annual meeting is next week, 16 - 18 January, on "Climate Change: Science and Solutions"; AIBS's annual meeting is 12 - 13 May , on "Climate, Environment, and Infectious Diseases."

Furthermore, NCSE is running a session at the AIBS meeting on "Climate Change and Human Health: Developing Collaborations with the Public Health Community." This will fit nicely with the rest of the AIBS meeting's program, whose speakers include Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and co-author with Terry L. Maple of the new book, "A Contract with the Earth" and James Hansen, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, speaking on climate change models and predictions.

Chaired by AIBS President Rita Colwell, the AIBS meeting this May will examine how the interrelationships of climate, environment, and human health are manifested in infectious disease patterns, notably seasonality. Vector borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, Avian influenza, SARS, and related diseases are known to be closely linked to the environment and, more recently, to climate. Interactions between climate, climate change, and the environment have been studied extensively by investigators in the US and abroad. The AIBS annual meeting will address these issues, and it is a pleasure have NCSE joining us.