Dear CHE Friends,
I hope this finds each of you well. CHE is very close to my heart. I was one of the co-founders who came together to create CHE in 2002 at a meeting at UCSF and shortly thereafter at a second meeting at Commonweal.
For the past 15 years, CHE has become the leading environmental health science resource for thousands of environmental health advocates, patient advocates, scientists, health professionals, and concerned citizens.
In April 2017, Karen Wang became the new director of CHE. Karen had a singular vision -- to sustain the core work that CHE has been doing-- and to create a new platform that spoke the language of Millennials.
Over the past year, Karen and the CHE staff have done a superb job. They have streamlined CHE's core work. CHE has championed a focus on radical inclusion of younger scientists with the widely acclaimed 20 Pioneers Under 40 in Environmental Public Health series. And CHE is now about to launch Because Health, a web platform and community aimed at providing environmental health information and resources for millennials.
They have also done a major refreshment of the CHE website -- it is a truly beautiful job.
What all of this means is that CHE's core work is as vibrant as ever -- and that Karen's vision of a new focus on communicating to young people is taking form. I endorse this vision wholeheartedly. Nothing is more important to environmental health than a new generation of leaders. Karen exemplifies that community.
My purpose in writing to you is to ask you to support CHE's work. In this time of extreme rejection of science -- especially the science of how the environment affects our health -- CHE is truly more important than ever.
And, in a time when the pioneers of environmental health science and advocacy are getting older, identifying the next generation of environmental health leaders is one of our most vital tasks.
So, I ask you to please make a contribution to help CHE sustain its work for the coming year. Your support truly matters.
With thanks for your support for CHE, and warm best wishes,
Michael Lerner
Co-founder, CHE
President and co-founder Commonweal