The book «Saúde Ambiental – Caderno de Notas Soltas» (Environmental Health – Loose Notes) results from the partnership established between the Students Association of the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon (AEFML) and the Institute of Environmental Health (ISAMB) of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon (FMUL). This partnership emerged in the context of the current pandemic, with the objective of providing all FMUL students with a set of initiatives included in the Prontuário AEFML (AEFML Medical Records), a space for the dissemination of «Enciclopédia de Saúde Ambiental (Environmental Health Encyclopaedia) and a thematic podcast to promote well-being in a context of social confinement (#inhouse4healthstudents).
Published by the AEFML in electronic format and edited by biologist Ricardo R. Santos, psychologist Osvaldo Santos and doctor António Vaz Carneiro, this book brings together 28 texts on health, environment and environmental health, written by more than 40 authors from several areas of knowledge (medicine, nursing, psychology, biology, nutrition, health sciences, pharmaceutical sciences, geography, sociology, and literature).
As Osvaldo Santos and António Vaz Carneiro refer in the preface to the book, “perhaps what impressed us the most, in this process of bringing together notes written by friends, was the fact that it was so easy to create such a comprehensive and multiple look at environmental health, only possible when the institutions (and the people who constitute them) make themselves available for partnerships”. This is something that the president of the AEFML, José Rodrigues, emphasizes in his preface: “Basically, this initiative is a clear example of the collaborative spirit involving lecturers, clinicians, researchers and students, one of the brand images of FMUL”. In addition, José Rodrigues said: “For my part, and I believe that the entire AEFML agrees, recognizing the enormous potential and interest of Environmental Health for our training as doctors and citizens, as well as its centrality in the greatest challenges that are imposed on my generation, we can only hope that this book will be the cornerstone of a promising collaboration that will last for several years”.
We anticipate a second volume of these loose notes on Environmental Health next year.
Ricardo R. Santos
Biologist and researcher.
Laboratory of Environmental Health Behaviour of the Institute of Environmental Health of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon.
Bioethics Centre of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon
ricardoreis@medicina.ulisboa.pt