Board on Health Sciences Policy & Institute of Medicine 
Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment 
The Greater Houston Metropolitan Area: Workshop Summary

Houston is struggling with many of the environmental problems that most of the nation’s major metropolitan areas are struggling with – transportation, water and air pollution, flooding, and major demographic changes. Therefore, Houston provided an excellent site for a regional meeting on the relationship between environment and health. The purpose of this workshop in Houston was to bring all the stakeholders together – the private and public sector, along with representatives of the diverse communities in Houston – to discuss the impact of the natural, built, and social environments on human health. Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment summarizes the presentations and discussions of this workshop. The lessons one may draw from this meeting’s presentations and discussions apply to other regions that are undergoing similar changes and that must also contend, as does Houston, with the legacies of insufficient planning, environmentally deficient planning, or sometimes, no planning at all.