It was my freshman year of college when COVID struck, and what started as a 3 week spring break, turned into a summer of quarantine and a fall full of asynchronous classes. And ironically enough for me, this was the time when I started my public health core classes. Every news headline was discussed, every paper and in-class activity reflected developing policies or mandates, and the line between school and real life became awfully blurry.

But at the time, it felt as though public health might be the most valuable degree to have going forward. Everything I learned in class was applicable to the circumstances happening around me. When my parents would ask “So what’s public health again sweetheart?” I could turn on the TV, or reference a new vaccine mandate, and it was as easy as that to explain it. Public health was in a state of revolution and I got to be a part of it.

Jump forward a couple years and I’m living in Washington DC and wrapping up a Master’s in Public Health Communication and Marketing, with a focus in environmental health communications. And again before my eyes, public and environmental health infrastructure and regulations are being transformed, but this time not for the better.

These days it seems to me that all my efforts, degrees, internships, and (fingers-crossed) a full-time job in the near future, are plagued with this uncertainty about where the progress of health in America is going. And not just my health, but the health of generations to come who will be directly impacted by the changes made in the last year.

Changes like reviving the dying coal industry, lowering accountability and oversight for polluting industries, selling off protected federal lands to be drilled, razed, and mined, and firing or pushing out the scientists, federal workers, and other public servants who dedicate their lives to better our country.

So with all that being said, what does Earth Day mean this year?

More Important Than Ever

Earth Day can be a holiday that gets lost in the shuffle of spring activities (St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, spring breaks, Mother’s Day, graduations, etc). But April 22 is a day we should take a moment to appreciate.

Some people might shrug it off and let it go by completely unnoticed. Many people will post a pretty picture of a waterfall, a sunset, or a mountain range and caption it “Earth Day 2026!”.

But this Earth Day, and likely the next couple Earth Days, are more important than ever. Earth Day is not simply about appreciating nature. It’s also about protecting nature, a value we tend to preach rather than practice. In reality, environmental protection is not as glamorous or easy as a sign that says “Don’t Litter”. Protecting nature and preserving it for future generations requires laws, regulations, and sometimes sacrifices in the way we go about our lives.

But let’s not forget that these laws, regulations, and sacrifices that so many of us fight for are inextricably tied to our health. And not in a figurative “protect your health” sense.

In a very real “every single breath you take, or sip of water you drink, or bite of food you eat” sense.

So when the Endangerment Finding is struck down, or AI data centers run rampant across our nation, or the Justice40 program is dismantled, it literally gets harder to breathe.

Our Power, Our Planet

The theme for Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power, Our Planet”, which in my opinion aptly reflects one of the things that people tend to overlook the most when it comes to the environmental movement. The Our in that slogan is crucial, because this movement extends beyond the borders of the United States.

It’s our power and our planet. All of us.

Our air and water and even soil doesn’t know boundaries or borders. They don’t care about treaties or walls or the other silly things we think divide us. If it’s contaminated over there, sooner or later, it’ll be contaminated here.

But this slogan also reflects a more positive view of our predicament, that just because progress slows in one area, does not mean it has to slow everywhere. Again, Earth Day is bigger than the confines of these 50 states. It’s a global movement, not under the control of any one person, party, or place.

The Past Can Show Us the Way

Collective action and community participation are powerful things. We all know that many voices are more powerful than one alone, but I think as a global community we forget how far we have come in the fight for a cleaner planet.

The events that led to the founding of Earth Day did not happen that long ago, but we’ve made remarkable progress in the way we treat our environment and the standards we hold ourselves and our neighbors to.

Throughout the 1900s, various environmental disasters and trends drew increasing public outcry as people began to wonder, why are we letting ourselves live like this when we don’t have to?

Love Canal, New York. Times Beach, Missouri. The Cuyahoga River fires and the near death of Lake Erie. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. All of these shocking (and some were frankly gross) degradations of nature awoke a national movement that has yet to disappear.

And in 1969, the tipping point.

The equivalent of 100,000 barrels of crude oil were dumped into the Santa Barbara Channel in California, which sparked the creation of the first Earth Day as well as the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

That was only 56 years ago.

But in that time, we’ve accomplished major environmental victories here and abroad.

In the United States, we passed the groundbreaking Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, the Superfund Act, and more.

The international community banded together through the Montreal Protocol to heal the ozone layer, the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise, and the Sustainable Development Goals to slow climate change, protect our oceans and forests, and promote global peace and prosperity.

These are not small wins.

These were massive undertakings in international relations, environmental advocacy, and honestly public willpower. Humans are notoriously fickle beings, but on multiple occasions we proved that we can work together across political and cultural divides to protect something that we all share.

Our home.

Hope in the Face of Despair

One of my favorite authors is John Green, who got his name from writing the books that defined my middle and high school years (The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, etc).

But more recently he’s penned some truly fantastic books about health, life, and the human condition.

Last April, I was lucky enough to attend a panel interview with Green and other global health advocacy partners hosted by my university. The talk primarily centered around international efforts to fight tuberculosis, related to Green’s newest book Everything Is Tuberculosis, but something Green said resonated with me beyond global infectious disease prevention.

He said “I keep learning again and again that hope is the right response to the human condition…”

“...I actually - I keep in my wallet a little note that says, the year you graduated from high school, 12 million children died under the age of 5. Last year, fewer than 5 million did. That progress, which is real and which is felt in the lives of millions of human beings and the tens of millions who love them - that progress was not natural. It was not inevitable. It did not happen because it was always going to happen. It happened because millions and millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, maybe billions of people came together to make it happen, to make the world safer for children. We decided that we were going to prioritize that, and when we prioritized it, we had tremendous success.”

What an incredible thought that is. That if we collectively decide to prioritize our planet’s health, and therefore our children’s health, we will see success. We’ve seen it before and we will see it again.

And that is what Earth Day means to me this year. It means continuing to fight for our planet, using all of the power and resources we have at our disposal.

It means hope, even in the face of despair.

Written by Anna Consolazio, MPH

Anna Consolazio is CEHN’s Fall and Spring Communication, Marketing, and Design Intern. She is graduating from George Washington University with a Master’s in Public Health Communications and Marketing. She is located in Washington, DC and is looking forward to finding a job in environmental health communications and advocacy.

CEHRT is a national network of researchers developing practical solutions to reduce the burden of childhood chronic disease and developmental concerns by translating established research findings into strategies, tools, and interventions to reduce children’s exposures to environmental hazards. CEHRT develops these resources for those who work to protect children’s health including healthcare practitioners, policymakers, child care providers, community leaders, and families.

There are six CEHRT centers across the country: the Bridging Research, Lung Health, and the Environment (BREATHE) Children’s Center at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the Philadelphia Regional Center for Children’s Environmental Health (PRCCEH) at the University of Pennsylvania, the Children’s Environmental Health Research Translation Center at the University of Southern California (USC), the Center for Children’s Health Assessment, Research Translation, and Combating Environmental Risk (CHARTER) at Emory University and the University of Georgia, the Advancing Science, Practice, Programming and Policy in Research Translation for Children’s Environmental Health (ASPIRE) at Oregon State University, and the NYU Collaborative Center in Children’s Environmental Health Research and Translation at New York University.

The briefing began with a welcome from Dr. Kimberly Gray, the NIEHS Program Officer for the CEHRT program, who emphasized that the program’s mission is to move scientific discoveries “from the lab or shelf to real world impacts that improve children’s health.” This is the first NIEHS program to have such a mission, and it is a natural extension on the 20 years of children’s environmental health research contributed by the Children’s Environmental Health & Disease Prevention Research Centers–a former program of NIEHS and the Environmental Protection Agency, which ended in 2018. Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, MPH, Executive Director of CEHN, also shared some opening remarks. “It is an honor for us to serve as the inaugural coordinating center for these amazing centers and the whirlwind of research that we rely on and that we have relied on for the entirety of our mission as an organization” she said.

The first presentation was from Drs. Meredith McCormack and Kirsten Koehler, from the BREATHE Center at Johns Hopkins University. The BREATHE Center focuses on researching children’s respiratory health, specifically asthma prevalence, and collects data on indoor and outdoor air pollutants. Their project, “Environmental Impacts on Children’s Respiratory Health,” used silicone wristbands to capture chemical exposures of children living in Baltimore. Through this project and other novel sampling approaches, the BREATHE center has determined that indoor concentrations of air pollutants often exceed outdoor concentrations.

The BREATHE center also conducts an Electronic Medical Record Initiative, which has the goal of identifying effective interventions across a person’s lifespan to improve the health and wellbeing of those with asthma. This initiative currently follows close to 600,000 patients diagnosed with asthma and collects information related to asthma exacerbations including demographics, spatial distributions, and environmental triggers. For example, higher temperatures and temperature variability are both associated with greater risk of asthma exacerbations in children. The Center found that in young adults, higher maximum and mean daily temperatures are associated with increased risk of asthma exacerbations, especially if they are located in an area of high socioeconomic disadvantage.

Next, Drs. Rebecca Simmons and Marilyn Howarth from the PRCCEH Center presented their project “Bolstering Children’s Environmental Health Through Targeted Actions.” The PRCCEH Center focuses on children’s exposure to air pollutants in the Philadelphia area, as well as lead exposure and extreme heat impacts.

In their presentation, the team outlined some of their projects currently underway, including their Community Asthma Prevention Program which has 124 families enrolled and has resulted in fewer asthma flares, the Environmental Health Consultation Program, which has provided over 90 free in-home consultations and resulted in improvements in anxiety, asthma flares, and allergy symptoms, and the Prescriptions for Prevention Program, which screens pediatric patients for environmental exposures and provides clinicians and patients with counseling materials, community resources, and tools for dealing with the environmental issue. 48 different prescriptions have been developed and they are currently in use across 30 primary care offices and 9 counties. They also have a very successful partnership with the Built To Last program, run by the Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA), which conducts total home repairs for low-income households in Philadelphia, updating them with basic systems repairs, health and safety improvements, energy and utility saving repairs, and rooftop solar.

Next up was Dr. Rob McConnell from the USC Center. The USC Center focuses on the effects of urbanism, air pollution, wildfire threats, and regional oil and gas production on children’s health in California. His presentation, “Urbanism, Air Pollution, and Children’s Health,” overviewed the Center’s recent initiatives including a Community Lending Library for low-cost air pollution monitors, Community Health Intervention Support which provides educational workshops and infographics to CA parents, and their Youth Environmental Summer Institute, which empowered CA youth to engage in environmental research and develop innovative communication strategies.

The Center also conducts the Be Heard! Seminar Series which empowers students and environmental health science practitioners to responsibly write, speak, and communicate their findings to larger audiences and with a louder voice. Finally, the Center uniquely focuses on using art as a method for translating environmental research, specifically with their immersive and interactive environmental justice experience and live performance, Sacrifice Zone, which highlights the damaging effects of decades of industrial pollution on Los Angeles communities.

The final presentation was from Dr. Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, from the CHARTER Center at Emory University and the University of Georgia (UGA). The CHARTER center focuses on developing interdisciplinary translational research and communication strategies to benefit children’s health in Atlanta and beyond.

To address the rising concern of hurricane impacts on Georgia’s coast, the CHARTER team, under Dr. Ahn at UGA, developed a virtual reality experience in partnership with NOAA to educate communities about the potential hazards associated with hurricanes. Dr. Ahn demonstrated a virtual reality storm surge simulation and discussed various methods for relaying crucial environmental findings to children and parents. After the presentation, briefing attendees were able to test out the VR simulations for themselves and ask the CHARTER team questions about the development and implementation of the tools.

The briefing was a successful showcase of the fantastic work of the CEHRT program in working with their communities, developing evidence-based, effective resources for multiple stakeholders, and supporting exciting pilot projects, emerging research, and early career researchers.

By Anna Consolazio–CEHN Communications, Marketing, and Design Intern and current Master’s in Public Health Communications and Marketing student at George Washington University

The executive order outlines a series of principles that, at first glance, may seem commendable. It insists that federal agencies should:

• Use science that is reproducible, falsifiable, peer-reviewed, and free from political interference.

• Publicly disclose the data and models behind scientific conclusions used in regulation, unless doing so would violate the law.

• Use weight-of-evidence frameworks that reflect a broad view of available research, and explicitly account for uncertainty in modeling.

But as the political and scientific communities dig into the substance of the order, many are asking a crucial question: is this truly an assertion to uphold scientific integrity, or a repackaged attempt to weaken regulatory science in favor of ideology and industry?

A New Name for an Old Rule

Central to the order is a revived version of what scientists have long criticized as the Secret Science Rule. First proposed under the Trump administration in 2018, the rule was ultimately rejected by courts and the Biden administration. It required that only studies with publicly available data could be used in regulatory decision-making. At the time, leading organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science pushed back, arguing that this rule ignored foundational principles of research ethics, especially in studies involving human subjects.

The 2025 order echoes those same demands under a new banner of "transparency." If implemented strictly, it could bar agencies like the EPA, FDA, and CDC from using landmark public health research, particularly epidemiological studies that involve marginalized communities, children, or long-term human observation. These studies often include data that cannot ethically or legally be made public, such as medical records or personal identifiers.

What Are Epidemiological Studies and Why Do They Matter?

To understand the stakes, it’s important to define what epidemiological (epi) studies are, and how they differ from bench science. While bench science is conducted in controlled lab settings, isolating variables and testing hypotheses under tightly regulated conditions. Epidemiology observes patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease in human populations. It draws from real-world data, with some types of studies over long periods, to identify risks, test public health interventions, and validate scientific theories.

Despite the complexity of studying human populations, epi researchers use rigorous statistical methods to control for confounding variables, such as age, socioeconomic status, or co-existing health conditions to ensure that observed associations are as reliable and meaningful as possible.

Epi studies reflect human lived experience, capturing how scientific phenomena play out in actual communities. They have been instrumental in identifying the health risks of smoking, lead exposure, air pollution, and more. In one instance, the tobacco industry has attacked epi studies for the same reasons now being repackaged as "gold standards", arguing they weren’t reproducible or precise enough to inform regulation.

History tells us: when powerful interests seek to limit which science “counts,” it’s often because the evidence threatens their bottom line.

Uncertainty Isn’t a Flaw, It’s Part of the Process

Much of the executive order’s language hinges on eliminating “unwarranted certainty.” But what does that really mean?

To the public, uncertainty often suggests confusion or a lack of knowledge. To scientists, uncertainty is a measure of how well something is known, a formal acknowledgment of complexity, not a sign of weakness. In fact, scientific rigor depends on understanding uncertainty: measuring it, reducing it, and transparently communicating its implications.

Epidemiologists are especially familiar with uncertainty. They routinely work with incomplete or evolving data and use statistical tools to quantify margins of error, estimate confidence intervals, and test the robustness of their models. This isn’t sloppy science, it’s how public health decisions are responsibly made in the real world.

As the Union of Concerned Scientists puts it:

“Uncertainty is a natural part of science. It does not mean we know nothing, only that our knowledge is incomplete. Scientists express uncertainty as a range of possible outcomes, and still provide decision-makers with valuable guidance.”

Acting Amid Uncertainty

The central paradox is this: policymakers must act even when science can’t offer 100% certainty. If we waited for definitive proof in every case, we would have no clean air laws, no tobacco restrictions, no vehicle safety regulations, no vaccines, and no climate policy.

Regulatory science operates under a different standard than pure research. It doesn’t aim for perfect knowledge, it aims to protect human health and safety based on the best available evidence. Precautionary action isn’t unscientific; it’s a moral and practical imperative.

Yet the language of the 2025 executive order could enable agencies to sideline valuable science not because it's invalid, but because it’s inconvenient, too uncertain, too messy, or too politically charged. And by framing those studies as “non-reproducible” or “methodologically insufficient,” the order opens the door to cherry-picking evidence that aligns with predetermined policy goals.

What’s at Stake

The Restoring Gold Standard Science order isn’t just a bureaucratic update. It’s a statement about what kinds of science are allowed to guide federal policy, and which are not. It raises urgent questions about who gets to define scientific rigor, and whether we’re willing to dismiss the very studies that have protected public health for decades.

Science isn’t perfect. But when uncertainty is weaponized to paralyze action or disqualify inconvenient evidence, we risk turning a tool of humility into a political bludgeon. Instead of embracing science’s complexity, the order demands a false simplicity… one that could cost lives.

This article was written by Elizabeth Sharp, CEHN intern.