Promoting environmental health in the Arab American community

Abstract

Many Arab American immigrants were born in countries that did not enforce laws and regulations related to environmental health and safety issues. Thus, they were not exposed to environmental health and safety programs during the mandatory primary years of schooling in their native countries. Many of them immigrated to North America without an awareness of healthy lifestyle practices. This chapter describes how Arab American community leaders in the field of environmental health can collaborate with the policy and decision makers who are responsible for approving programs to enhance healthy lifestyle practices in Arab Americans. When nonprofit community organizations and clubs are willing to collaborate with researchers to conduct pilot studies, they will be in a better position to make recommendations to policy and decision makers who can then implement these recommendations. The goals of these endeavors are to achieve healthy living environments and greater productivity not only for Arab Americans but for Americans overall.