Dr. Wendell Kingsolver, a doctor for more than half a century and an advocate for family medicine and rural health, dies at 96

Wendell Kingsolver, M.D.

Dr. Wendell Roy Kingsolver, a longtime physician and advocate for family medicine and public health, especially in rural Kentucky, died Thursday, May 30. He was 96 and lived in Nicholasville.

After graduation from the University of Kentucky and an internship and residency, Kingsolver set up a family practice at Carlisle in his home Nicholas County. He was one of the few physicians in the area and served patients of all ages at all hours in emergency, operating, and delivery rooms, He was among the first physicians certified by the American Board of Family Practice, and trained UK medical students in rural family practice as they lived in his home and learned what a diverse rural medical career was like. In the 1960s he was a medical volunteer in the Republic of Congo, and later on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia and the Newfoundland coast town of St. Anthony. After retiring from five decades of full-time private practice, he was a public-health doctor for the Wedco District Health Department in in Nicholas, Harrison, Bourbon and Scott counties.

Kingsolver was an early adopter of organic farming, and he and his first wife Virginia were founding members of the Sierra Club chapter in Kentucky, the group that built Lake Carnico in Nicholas County, and the First Christian Church in Carlisle, where he was an elder and sang in the choir. He was a board member of the Cane Ridge Meeting House, where the Disciples of Christ denomination began. He enjoyed birdwatching and served a term as president of the Kentucky Ornithological Society. He and Ginny, who predeceased him, established a KOS scholarship for young people interested in the study of birds, and worked to preserve natural land in Nicholas County, some of it donated to the Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park.

Kingsolver's survivors include his wife, Eva Lee (Lynam Kanatzar) Kingsolver; son Robert (Paula) Kingsolver; daughter and noted author Barbara Kingsolver (Steven Hopp); and Ann Kingsolver, former director of the Appalachian Center at UK. A viewing will be held Tuesday, June 4, at 2 p.m., followed by the funeral at 4 p.m., at Milward Funeral Home, 391 Southland Drive in Lexington.

Information for this article was taken from the obituary.

UK gets another 5-year grant to study major environmental health impacts on Kentuckians, keeping focus on Appalachian Kentucky

UK press release

The University of Kentucky Center for Appalachian Research in Environmental Sciences will continue its work to study major environmental health impacts on Kentuckians with a renewed award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The $7.4 million grant will run for the next five years. UK-CARES was established in August 2017, with an initial $7.4 million NIEHS grant, making it an Environmental Health Sciences Core Center to enhance research across all spectrums — basic, clinical, epidemiological, and translational.

UK-CARES is focused on studying environmental health effects of air and water quality that are implicated in environmentally induced disease, as well as emerging threats such as flooding and exposure to new contaminants.

Ellen J. Hahn

“Over these last five years, our commonwealth has been through one major event after another, from the Covid-19 pandemic to historic flooding and devastating tornadoes,” said Ellen J. Hahn, professor in the UK colleges of Nursing and Public Health, and director of UK-CARES. “The members of UK-CARES along with our community partners have done critical research to understand and address environmental health impactsWe will continue to learn with and from the community to tackle the environmental challenges facing the state and the health of its people, especially throughout Appalachia.”

The center provides pilot project funding, research expertise, career development, a faculty fellows program in science communication, mentorship, and community grants to facilitate innovative discovery and new understandings of environmental factors in disease initiation, progression and outcomes and their community impacts. You can learn more about those efforts here.

“The research conducted within UK-CARES is a tangible fulfillment of the University of Kentucky’s mission to serve the commonwealth, specifically the people who face the highest rates of chronic diseases and the regions that face tremendous environmental challenges,” said Lisa Cassis, UK vice president for research. “The renewal of this award will allow investigators across our institution and stakeholders in the community to continue to partner to find solutions to these pressing environmental health issues in Appalachian Kentucky and beyond.”

UK-CARES is housed in the College of Nursing, along with BREATHE (Bridging Research Efforts and Advocacy Toward Healthier Environments), which Hahn also runs. The center has an interdisciplinary team of researchers across the colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Engineering, as well as the Gill Heart Institute, Kentucky Water Research Institute, Markey Cancer Center, the UK Center for Excellence in Rural Health and Kentucky Homeplace, and the USA Drone Port in Hazard.

The center offers different types of memberships for those interested in contributing to the breadth of environmental health research at the center. You can find more information here.

New Kentucky website provides data, maps and charts on how the environment affects human health, county by county

The website's address is Healthtracking.ky.gov.

The state Department for Public Health has launched a new resource for tracking a variety of topics that affect health in Kentucky. 

The website Healthtracking.ky.gov not only includes information and data about how the environment affects human health in a number of ways, but also presents data in map, chart or table formats for subcategories in each topic area. 

For example, under the category of heart disease and stroke, the site also provides information about the age-adjusted rate of hospitalization for heart attacks in each county, the crude rate of hospitalizations for heart attack in each county, and the number of hospitalizations for heart attack in each county. 

Other topics include: air quality, asthma, birth defects, cancer, childhood lead poisoning, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), carbon-monoxide poisoning, climate and weather, drinking water, heat-related illness, radon (a naturally occuring, cancer-causing gas) and reproductive and birth outcomes. 

Data on the new site comes from several counrse, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Kentucky Cancer Registry, state and local Health Departments and many others. Data can be examined at a state or county level.

The site also offers online maps with information about local health departments, prescription assistance, social vulnerability, and community vulnerability to Covid-19. It is managed by the health department's Environmental Public Health Tracking Program.

Senate passes bill to limit Medicare drug costs, keep Obamacare discounts; Ky. senators vote no, citing tax increases, inflation

Kentucky Health News

Senate Democrats passed a bill Sunday titled the Inflation Reduction Act, which would allow Medicare to negotiate with drug manufacturers to lower prices, as well as limiting out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries and continuing pandemic-lowered rates for federally subsidized health insurance.

Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all other Republican senators in voting against the bill, which would also pay for several measures to combat climate change. It passed the Senate on Vice President Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote and is expected to pass the House this week.

The bill targets climate change mainly through tax credits for electric vehicles, and would be paid for with "substantial tax increases, mostly on large corporations, including establishing a 15 percent corporate minimum tax and imposing a new tax on company stock buybacks," The New York Times reports. It also aims to boost tax revenue by boosting the payroll of the Internal Revenue Service.

Republicans said the economy is in recession, so it is no time to raise taxes, and cited official estimates that the bill would have little economic impact. McConnell said in a press release that Democrats' "response to the runaway inflation they’ve created is a bill that experts say will not meaningfully cut inflation at all. The American people are clear about their priorities. Environmental regulation is a 3% issue. Americans want solutions for inflation, crime, and the border."

Florida Sen. Rick Scott said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that because drug companies will have less money for research, "there will be lifesaving drugs that seniors will not get." Told that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 1% of drugs would be so affected, Scott said a viewer's grandmother might be in the 1%.

Those provisions would not take effect until 2026 and would apply to only 10 drugs, but would include more drugs in later years.

The bill would put a $2,000 annual cap on seniors' out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, and would guarantee that they could get vaccines without charge. Medicare patients would pay no more than $35 a month for insulin; the bill would have set the same limit for private insurance plans, but Republicans forced removal of that, based on the parliamentary rules governing the bill.

People on federally subsidized health insurance, known as Obamacare, would get three more years of the discounts that Democrats pushed into law last year and that would otherwise expire this fall, just before the annual enrollment period for Obamacare policies, held by about 90,000 Kentuckians.

U of L gets $16.4 million from National Institutes of Health to study impacts of the environment on diabetes and obesity

The University of Louisville has been awarded $16.4 million to study how the environment impacts diabetes and obesity, U of L announced.

"Officials said research will be conducted on how air pollution could be connected to diabetes, and whether the dietary supplement carnosine can protect people from air pollution," reports Lisa Gillespie of WFPL.

Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the U of L Diabetes and Obesity Center, told Gillespie that the funding will also be used to explore diabetes and obesity as it relates to cardiovascular issues.

“Diabetes and obesity are the leading cause of public health problems within the country as well as within the state,” Bhatnagar told Gillespie. “Heart disease is one of the main consequences of diabetes and obesity. In fact, people who have diabetes, about 70 percent of them die from heart disease.”

The National Institutes of Health grant will also fund research around the effects of pollution on stem cell health; how exercise can reduce inflammation; and how the heart talks to blood vessels to increase blood flow during exercise, the university says.

Philanthropist Christy Brown gives U of L $5 million for institute to study environmental conditions that affect human health

Christy Brown, U of L President Neeli Benapudi and Dr. Aruni
Bhatnagar, director of the Envirome Institute. (U of L photo)

With a $5 million gift from leading Louisville philanthropist Christina Lee Brown, through the Owsley Brown II Family Foundation, the University of Louisville has established an Envirome Institute in its School of Medicine to "develop integrated knowledge of the environmental determinants of health."

The name of the institute is not missing three letters. The word "envirome" is a knock-off from "genome," which is the "map of our genetic code, revealing how our genes relate to our health, and potentially our susceptibility to disease," the university says in a press release. "Built on a new vision of health, the Envirome Institute pioneers actionable knowledge about all forms of health and how they are affected by the environment beyond genomics. This gift from Brown catalyzes existing resources and adds new capabilities toward the ambitious, long-term mission of studying the human envirome with the same precision and rigor applied to decoding the human genome."

What's an envirome? Wikipedia says it "includes all of the environmental conditions required for successful biological life that affect human health. In genetic epidemiology, an envirome the total set of environmental factors, both present and past, that affect the state, and in particular the disease state, of an organism."

The Envirome Institute is the successor to the university's Kentucky Institute for the Environment and Sustainable Development. "Like KIESD, the institute will support research and applied scholarship, teaching and educational outreach activities, but with greater emphasis on community engagement and health," the university said. "The Envirome Institute is the first institute dedicated to the study of the human envirome. Taking a holistic approach to researching how the human-environment interrelationship impacts peoples’ lives, the institute will build on the pioneering work of Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, the institute’s director, in the field of environmental cardiology. The institute will incorporate community engagement and citizen science to introduce a singular, new approach to the study of health."

The university has also created a Center for Healthy Air, Water, and Soil as part of the Envirome Institute. Brown had previously created a private nonprofit called the Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil. Its work will shift to the center, which "will support outreach activities to promote collaborations and interactions with the community for information exchange, partnership in scientific studies, dissemination of environmental information to the community and consultation by the community on issues relevant to the environment and health," the university said.

Interior Department official met with coal industry lobbyists before canceling study on health effects of surface mining in Appalachia

A top official in the Department of the Interior met repeatedly with coal-industry lobbyists shortly before canceling a study on the public health effects of surface mining, Jimmy Tobias reports for the Pacific Standard.

Katharine MacGregor

Katharine MacGregor, the principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, oversees the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. OSM hired the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine to do the study, but Interior abruptly suspended it last August, as researchers were about to hold their final public meetings on it. The meetings were held, and researchers said they expected to continue after a budget review that Interior had cited as the reason for the suspension, but then Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail revealed that the study was the only one suspended. Later, the contract was canceled and the research committee disbanded.

Tobias writes: "Emails obtained through a FOIA request show that Katharine MacGregor had a hand in ensuring the health study's cancellation. Indeed, she appears to have been keenly interested in the matter." She wrote the OSM director Aug. 17: I thought you told me on the phone that this was postponed?" The next day, OSM suspended the work.

“This is the very essence of what we mean when we describe Appalachia as a sacrifice zone,” said Bob Kincaid, president of Coal River Mountain Watch, a group fighting mountaintop-removal mining. Bo Webb, coordinator of the Appalachian Community Health Emergency campaign, which helped prompt West Virginia officials to ask for the study, said in the same press release, "It’s clear now that canceling this study was a gift to the coal industry.."

Tobias reports that "in the months leading up to the cancellation," MacGregor's calendar "shows that she had no fewer than six meetings with the most powerful mining players in the country. In both April and May of 2017, she met with the National Mining Association. In March and June, meanwhile, she met with Arch Coal, a long-time practitioner of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia."

The evidence is circumstantial, but Tobias sees a broader trend in MacGregor's calendars: "At the same time she held a mere handful of meetings—fewer than 10, according to my tally—with conservation organizations like The Wilderness Society and Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters." The calendar sshow that she "appears to have a habit of meeting repeatedly with industries and organizations that later receive favorable treatment from agencies she helps oversee," Tobias writes. An Interior spokesperson told him MacGregor is "happy to make time to meet with whomever requests a meeting," including conservation groups. "We have always welcomed input from all citizens and will continue to listen to ideas and concerns from anyone interested in sharing them."

Denied federal funding, study on the health effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining has been abandoned

"After Trump administration officials ordered a halt to a study on the health effects of mountaintop removal last fall, the study’s committee has been released, effectively terminating the project," Kate Mishkin reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

"The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s study would have looked at the health effects on residents who live near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites. It was put on hold when the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining announced that it was reviewing grants and agreements that would cost more than $100,000."

An Interior spokesperson did not answer any questions about why the study was terminated and whether it might be revived in the future. Riya Anandwala, a spokesperson for the National Academies, would not speculate on the reason for the study's termination, but told Mishkin it was "not unprecedented, but it's very rare."

National panel studying surface coal mining's effects on health sets meetings Mon. night in Hazard, Tue. afternoon in Lexington

In a study of possible health risks from large-scale strip mining, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine will hold two public meetings in Kentucky.

The first meeting will be held from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Monday, Aug. 21, at the Perry County Library, 289 Black Gold Blvd. in Hazard.

The second meeting will be held from 12:45 to 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Marriott Griffin Gate Resort, 1800 Newtown Pike in Lexington.

The study was commissioned by the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, citing a “growing amount of academic research that relates to possible correlations between increased health risks as a result of living near surface coal mine operations.”

Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader notes, "Several studies have concluded that mountaintop mining in Central Appalachia is associated with higher rates of cancer, heart disease and other health problems among local residents." The leading researcher has pointed to dust containing rare-earth metals as a likely cause. However, a 2012 study by a Yale University researcher and others for coal interests "did not find that mining or mining-related pollution directly contributed to health problems in Central Appalachia," Estep notes. "Rather, the results pointed to 'substantial economic and cultural disadvantages that adversely impact the health of many area residents,' the study said." The leading researcher says his work has accounted for those issues.

Information about the study can be found here. For more information, or to register to attend, email rchappetta@nas.edu or call 202-334-2766.

Appalachian Health and Well-Being Forum focused on the positive health initiatives going on in southeastern Kentucky

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

Scientists, community leaders and researchers gathered at the Appalachian Health and Well-Being Forum at Whitesburg in July to share information about successful health and disease prevention programs in the region, to explore the role of community in preventing disease and promoting well-beings and to discuss the links between environment and health.

Linda Birnbaum

The forum was prompted by Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. She told those at the forum that the mission of her agency is “to discover how the environment affects people in order to promote healthier lives. More and more, we are all realizing that the environment influences our health."

Birnbaum pointed out that many diseases are linked to the environment, including asthma, infertility, lung diseases, Parkinson's, autism, birth defects and many cancers. She stressed the importance of doing research to understand the problem before pushing for solutions, noting community members have used NIEHS research to create healthier communities.

"As I see it, environmental health research is the key to preventing disease because you can’t change your genes, but you can change your environment," she said.

Though Birnbaum did not mention it in her prepared remarks, an ongoing environmental concern in the Appalachian region is the possible link between mountaintop-removal coal mining and health, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Indiana University School of Public Health are researching.

In addition, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement announced recently that it will fund a $1 million study to examine links between surface coal mines in Central Appalachia and increased health risks of residents living near those mines.

Birnbaum was able to talk to local leaders about issues affecting the natural resources in the community during her site visits to the University of Kentucky Center of Excellence in Rural Health in Hazard, the Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp., the Appalshop media center and the Cowan Community Center in Whitesburg, according to a UK news release.

The forum, held at the Letcher County Cooperative Extension Service office, was sponsored by UK and NIEHS, which has provided almost $12 million for health research in Kentucky.

Fran Feltner

Fran Feltner, director of the UK CERH in Hazard, who participated in the forum, mentioned several successful health programs at the Center during a telephone interview, including: the Center's efforts to assess the health-related workforce needs in the region and then finding ways to fill them; working with Kentucky Homeplace, which helps people in the region gain access to medical, social and environmental services; a federal grant program that helps get children in the region signed up for health insurance; and its mobile dental unit that provides dental services to children at local schools.

"It was a positive meeting where we came together as leaders and talked about the things that are happening throughout our region to improve the health of the region," Feltner said.

Along with Birnbaum and Feltner, Dawn Brewer, assistant professor in the UK Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment; and L.M. "Mike" Caudill, chief executive officer of Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp., participated in a panel discussion that focused on the role of community in preventing disease and promoting health and well-being.

Brewer described nutrition research that hopes to “make the healthy choice, the easy, or default, choice" and Caudill talked about the importance of place and how it is central to MCHC's efforts to promote health within the region, the news release said.

At table, L-R: Mike Caudill, Fran Feltner, Dawn Brewer, Linda Birnbaum

Feltner talked about how a depressed economy affects the health of a community and expanded on her comments during an interview.

When a person becomes unemployed their "normal living conditions" dramatically change and can affect their health, she said.

"Research supports that economic status has more to do with your health outcomes than any other thing because you risk being homeless, you risk separation from your family and community network, it creates economic and cultural barriers and all of this can be devastating to your health," Feltner said. "And psychologically, I think it is hard to feel your worth when you have been working and all at once you find yourself unemployed, so the mental health aspects play into it as well."

Feltner said while she saw no immediate solution to improve employment in the region, people in the region had to "come together to find solutions to do something different" because they could no longer depend on coal mining.

"I have always believed that communities can work together and that they can come up with solutions," Feltner said. "And sometimes there needs to be just a little bit of help. We can't come in and tell people what to do, but we can listen and help them find solutions."

She added, "The strength that we have in Appalachia is that we have a strong sense of where we are from and where we live and a commitment to our neighbors and friends."

For an audio report on the forum, from WMMT-FM of Whitesburg, click here.

Lifestyle and environment matter most when it comes to cancer, study suggests; Kentucky leads the nation in cancer deaths

Lifestyle choices and environment may matter most when it comes to your likelihood of getting cancer, according to a new study in the journal Nature, Jen Christensen and Kevin Flower report for CNN.

"Environmental factors play important roles in cancer incidence, and they are modifiable through lifestyle changes and/or vaccination," the authors write.

Basically, the study is a reminder that many of the things people have control over -- smoking, sun exposure, poor diet, use of tanning beds, air-pollution exposure, radiation exposure, and decisions to be vaccinated for a virus that causes cervical cancer -- can play a role in whether a person might get cancer or not.

Kentucky leads the U.S. in cancer deaths, and consistently leads the nation in lung cancer deaths, which kills Kentuckians at a rate 50 percent higher than the national average. It also is ranked in the top 10 nationally for deaths from breast, colorectal and cervical cancer.

“It’s really been driven by three major things: obesity, smoking and lack of screening,” Louisville gastroenterologist Dr. Whitney Jones, told Laura Ungar of The Courier-Journal in recent story about cancer and Kentucky. “Our state is completely inundated with risk factors.”

The good news is that Kentuckians have control over some of the external factors mentioned in the study. The World Health Organization says nearly half of cancers could be prevented if people changed their lifestyle or reduced their environmental exposure to cancer-causing agents.

The study builds on another released earlier this year in the journal Science that said many of the cancers people get are due to "bad luck," which set off a controversy. The authors of  the study have said they were "merely talking about a variety in cancers in 31 different tissue types," CNN reports.

The latest research, although still in its early stages, concluded that only 10 percent to 30 percent of cancers start because of the "bad luck" factor and that the greatest majority of cancer might be due to outside factors.

UK research project will create strategies to improve respiratory health for those living in Appalachian Kentucky

Public health researchers at the University of Kentucky will undertake a five-year long research project called "Community-Engaged Research and Action to Reduce Respiratory Disease in Appalachia," Sarah Noble writes in a UK press release.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the project will involve creating strategies to improve respiratory and environmental public health. Kentuckians living in Appalachian counties have the state's highest rates of serious respiratory illness.

"Adults in Appalachian Kentucky are 50 percent more likely to develop asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than the overall U.S. population," Noble writes. "As many as one in five adults in the region have received a diagnosis of asthma, and rates of COPD are nearly two-and-a-half fold the incidence of the disease in other parts of the country.

Although studies show associations between respiratory health problems and environmental contaminants, data doesn't yet include individual-level assessments or behavioral risk factors common in the area—such as smoking, poor diet and insufficient physical activity. The "Community Response to Environmental Exposures in Eastern Kentucky" project will fill those gaps.

The CREEEK project will include three steps. A community-based assessment will "identify the relationships between indoor air pollutants, behavioral and social determinants and the effects these factors have on risk of respiratory disease," Noble writes. That information "will be shared with local stakeholders in an effort to increase understanding of the environmental exposures present in the region," then the project will put in place "an environmental public health action strategy and will evaluate that strategy's ability to impact short-and long-term outcomes for respiratory health."

New license plate would promote outdoor recreation, support environmental education programs; 900 buyers needed to start

A new "Let's Go Outside" license plate is being offered to give Kentucky motorists the opportunity to promote the health and environmental benefits of outdoor recreation.

First Lady Jane Beshear unveiled the license plate June 10. She said that encouraging children to play outside will help improve their health and noted that "Kentucky has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the nation," reports to The Lane Report.

Proceeds from the specialty plate will support the work of the Kentucky Environmental Education Council, including coordinating the Kentucky Green and Healthy Schools program and certifying professional environmental educators.

“Kentuckians have said in surveys that children not spending enough time outside is a major concern,” KEEC Executive Director Elizabeth Schmitz said. “One of our goals is to encourage children to embrace the outdoors and to teach them the importance of a clean environment for our health and preservation."

The Kentucky Environmental Education Council needs 900 applications, each accompanied by a $25 donation, before any plates will be manufactured.

Submitting the application does not obligate you to purchase the plate, but your donation will be credited toward the purchase of a plate once they are in production. If not enough applications are received, your $25 will be considered a tax-deductible donation.

A link to download the application is available at www.keec.ky.gov/LetsGoOutside.

As part of Louisville visit, Prince Charles attends roundtable on health and the environment with health and environmental leaders

Press pool report by Al Cross, Kentucky Health News

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales arrived at the foot of the Big Four Bridge, an old railroad bridge recently converted into a pedestrian bridge, at 3:07 p.m. He was accompanied by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and was greeted by U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville. They ascended a stairway leading to the pedestrian ramp and had a discussion on the ramp. Your pool could hear only snatches of conversation, but it was clear that Fischer and Yarmuth were describing the bridge project, which links Louisville to Jeffersonville, Ind.

Dr. Elliott Antman, in sunglasses, speaks as Prince Charles and other participants listen

The group descended the ramp and entered a plastic-and-canvas tent, joining a health-and-environment roundtable that had been in progress for about an hour. The pool was present for introductory remarks by the mayor and by Dr. Elliott Antman, president of the American Heart Association, but there was no amplification and the pool was kept at such a distance that he could not be heard clearly, and we were shuffled out after just a few minutes. Through the opening and the clear plastic we could see that HRH was animatedly engaged in conversation with the participants.

Yarmuth said afterward that the conversation was “about how the health care system by itself, the medical system, is not the thing we should be concerned about in trying to be concerned about the general health and well-being of society,” but rather how to prevent people from entering that system, “and there are so many entities that have role” in doing that.

Gordon Garner, former director of the Metropolitan Sewer District and president of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, said the broad message of the meeting was “the linkage to both the built and natural environment” when it comes to health. “The big message would be … the overwhelming need we have as a society to raise our level of stewardship .. that public awareness is way, way behind what the needs are. We’ve got to develop some kind of stewardship commitment that we currently don’t have.”

According to an email from Chuck Lambert of Humana Inc. to the participants, a copy of which your pool reporter obtained, following are the invited participants. It could not be confirmed whether all on the list were actually at the roundtable.

INVITEES to roundtable (other than Antman, mentioned above):

Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, Ph.D., Institute of Molecular Cardiology, University of Louisville

Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, 43^rd U.S. Army Surgeon General

Meredith Barrett, vice president of science and research, Propeller Health

Dr. Alonzo Plough, vice president of research, evaluation and learning and chief science officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Dr. Sharmila Makhija, chair of ob/gyn and women’s health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx, N.Y. (formerly at U of L)

Tom FitzGerald, director, Kentucky Resources Council (Kentucky’s leading environmental lobbyist)

Dr. Ted Smith, executive director, Institute for Healthy Air, Water and Soil; and chief of civic innovation, Metro Louisville government

Peter Crane, dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Mary Gwen wheeler, executive director, 55,000 Degrees (program aimed at expanding number of college graduates in Louisville)

Dr. James Sublett, president, American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology

Hugh Archer, executive director, Kentucky Natural Lands Trust

Barry Barker, executive director, Transit Authority of River City

Margaret “Peggy” Plympton, deputy chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities

Dr. Mahendra Sunkara, director, Conn Center for Renewable Energy Research, U of L

Burt Lauderdale, executive director, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (environmental and social justice group)

Timothy (Tim) State, enterprise vice president, associate health and well-being, Humana Inc.

Barry Gottschalk, president and CEO, American Lung Association of the Midland States

David Tandy, president. Louisville Metro Council

Craig Anthony Arnold, chair, Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibility, U of L

Dr Cary Sennett, president and CEO, Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

OBSERVERS:

Charles “Chuck” Lambert, Humana VP and chair, Louisville Sustainability Council

David VanSIckle, cofounder and CEO, Propeller Health

Paul Tarini, senior program officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Ben Reno-Weber, director, Greater Louisvile Project

Tad Waddington, CEO, lasting Contribution Inc.

Gordon Garner, president, Kentucky Waterways Alliance

Andrew Smith, student

Stephanie Sido, aide-de-camp, Gen. Horoho

Robert Connolly, chair, Stites & Harbison law firm

Wes Jackson, president, The Land Institute

Deena Adams, development manager, American Lung Association in Kentucky

Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, chief science officer, American Heart Association

Dr. John Johnston, co-director, Norton Hospital Leatherman Spine Center

Wendell and Mary Berry welcome Prince Charles and wife to Louisville, where prince will focus on local food and sustainability

In honor of a royal visit on Friday to Louisville by Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who will be highlighting issues of sustainability and local food, renowned farmer-author-poet-philosopher Wendell Berry and his daughter Mary Berry, executive director of The Berry Center in New Castle, have written a welcome letter, published in The Courier-Journal. It begins:

Sir,

Your presence among us honors us. We have taken courage from your courage in opposing those who destroy for short-term profit the substance, health, and beauty of this world, which we did not make and cannot conserve except in obedience to its natural laws and to the divine imperative of human stewardship.

You will not be surprised to learn that in Kentucky, as in much of the world, the ways of conserving the land, the water, and the air are repeatedly blocked by the combination of corporate wealth, political connivance, academic complacency, and a deficit of hope where hope is most needed.

Here as elsewhere, the damages done by surface mining are severe, permanent, and largely unrestrained; the loss of land to "development" is, arithmetically, unsustainable; our use of our forests is for the most part ecologically unsound; our farmlands are eroding under an increasing burden of annual grain crops; those lands are priced beyond the reach of aspiring small farmers; and our streams are everywhere degraded by chemical and other pollutants.

But I believe you will be unsurprised also to learn that in Kentucky, as in places similarly exploited and threatened all over the world, there is a growing number of people and groups of people competently aware of, and determinedly opposed to, the diminishment of the natural health and beauty of our state and our world. We are proud to welcome you into the company of friends and allies who, like you, are unrestingly committed to the work of ecological sense and sanity. (Read more)