Green medicine: how our health depends on the health of the Earth

Pediatrics and safeguarding the environment don't usually go hand-in-hand. But Children's Hospital Boston resident Ari Bernstein, MD, is making a career of combining the two. For his new book, Sustaining Life, written with Eric Chivian, MD, director for the Center for Global Health and Environment at Harvard Medical School, Bernstein spent more than five years interviewing scientists and ecologists around the world and found that Earth's biodiversity (the variety of life on the planet) directly impacts our health in ways that most of us aren't aware of. "We're at a point in human history when people have become so detached from the natural world and so convinced that we can live without nature that we aren't aware of how our health is so incredibly tied to the health of the natural world," Bernstein says. ... More

in this issue

10-year plan enters second phase | A Children's Hospital Boston multi-disciplinary team, led by Sandra Fenwick, chief operating officer, has taken the next step in the Time to be Bold long-term planning campaign, which looks 10 to 15 years ahead to project what Children's should be like in the future.

Lactation Program anniversary: 10 years of lactation support | Did you know that breastfeeding a newborn is recommended for at least of six to 12 months? Have you heard that when a mother delivers her baby prematurely, she makes special, preterm breast milk?

In her own words: Saida Abdi | It is Thursday at 2:25 p.m., and like every Thursday, I walk into a classroom full of smiling Somali-speaking teenage girls. "Hi edo (aunt) Saida! Hi moma Saida! Salaama Aleykum!" they shout in voices filled with joy and anticipation. They know that the next hour will be filled with fun activities, food and sharing stories.

Employee of the month | Congratulations to Kelli Sheehan, RN, level II staff nurse on 6 West, who's been selected as June's Employee of the Month.

Young parent Lisie Nunez comes out on top | When Lisie Nunez was 19, she put her dreams of becoming a nurse on hold to take care of her newborn son, Charlie. "It was tough having a child so young," she says. "I didn't expect it and I wasn't prepared."