Eric Chivian

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Chivian (right) during a book presentation in the Netherlands (1982)

Eric S. Chivian is the founder and director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment (CHGE) at Harvard Medical School,[1] where he is also an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry.

Life and career

A 1964 graduate of Harvard University (AB, biochemistry), he went on to graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1968.[2]

Between 1980 and 2000, Chivian was a staff psychiatrist in the MIT Medical Department.

W.H. Freeman and Company in 1983.[7]

In the early 1990s, Chivian became involved in efforts to create a greater awareness of the impacts which environmental degradation has on human health and well-being. His second book (as senior editor and lead author) was Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment.[8] The book, published by MIT Press[9] in 1993, was one of the first books on this topic for a general audience (later editions were published in German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Persian).

Chivian founded the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School in 1996, with the mission "to help people understand that our health, and that of our children, depends on the health of the environment and that we must do everything we can to protect it."[10] The center is designated an official "Collaborating Center" of the United Nations Environment Programme. Chivian developed and directed the Harvard Medical School course "Human Health and Global Environmental Change", which he taught for a decade and which has been disseminated to 65 other medical schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. and abroad; he also designed an intensive annual course on the environment and health for the U.S. Congress and led and participated in numerous congressional briefings.[11]

Chivian is recognized as a leading proponent of efforts to create a greater awareness amongst policy makers and the public of the importance of

UN Headquarters, the Smithsonian Institution, and at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties meeting in Bonn, Germany in 2008.[14] The book includes contributions from over 100 leading biodiversity and health scientists, and has been widely praised for its detailed coverage of a broad range of issues in a manner accessible to the general public.[15] Sustaining Life was named best biology book for 2008 by the Library Journal along with E. O. Wilson's and Bert Hölldobler's Superorganism. [16]

Chivian was also involved in setting up the First International Conference on Health and Biodiversity (COHAB 2005) which he opened in Galway, Ireland in 2005. This was the first global meeting of its kind to bring UN agencies, scientists, NGOs, policy makers, economists, indigenous and local community representatives and the private sector together to explore the wide-ranging implications of biodiversity loss for human health and well-being. The conference, and the global programme for Co-operation on Health and Biodiversity which was established as a result, were largely based on Chivian's work and the concepts behind the Sustaining Life project.[17]

In recent years, Chivian has worked to explore common ground between scientific and religious perspectives on environmental issues. Together with the Rev. Richard Cizik, then Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, Chivian was named by Time magazine in 2008 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, for their work in organizing scientists and evangelicals to join together in efforts to protect the global environment.[18]

Chivian runs Pairidaeza Farm, an almost fully

Asian pears, apricots, plums, cherries and grapes.[19]

Chivian's father-in-law was writer

BAFTA-winning nuclear war docu-drama Threads, produced in 1984.[20]

References

  1. ^ CHGE website
  2. ^ De Cuevas, John. "Societal Doctor". Harvard Magazine. No. March-April 2003. Retrieved 9 February 2018.
  3. ^ Record on MIT Museum website
  4. ^ "IPPNW Website". Archived from the original on 2009-03-20. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
  5. ^ "The Nobel Peace Prize 1985". www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.
  6. ^ Chivian, E.; et al. (1988). "American and Soviet Teenagers' Concerns about Nuclear War and the Future". The New England Journal of Medicine. 319 (7): 407–413.
  7. ^ Last Aid listing on Amazon.com
  8. ^ Critical Condition listing on Amazon.com
  9. ^ "MIT Press". Archived from the original on Jun 16, 2009. Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.
  10. ^ CHGE website
  11. ^ List of programs of the CHGE
  12. ^ Publications and Journal references
  13. ^ "Details on the Oxford University Press website". Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.
  14. ^ Unit, Biosafety (Jan 20, 2009). "Welcome to COP 9". www.cbd.int. Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.
  15. ^ Book jacket for Sustaining Life
  16. ^ "Library Journal". www.libraryjournal.com. Archived from the original on Mar 6, 2009. Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.
  17. ^ Reference on website of the COHAB Initiative; also News article at Infochangeindia.org[usurped] and Meeting Report by the Secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity
  18. ^ Anderson, Leith (2008). "The 2008 Time 100: Eric Chivian & Richard Cizik". Time. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008.
  19. ^ Reference on CHGE website
  20. ^ "Eric Chivian". IMDb. Retrieved Nov 18, 2022.

External links

Media related to Eric Chivian at Wikimedia Commons