Environmental Pollutants vs Human Health: And the winner is …

Spotlight Event

Environmental Pollutants vs. Human Health: And the winner is….

Co-hosted by the Sierra Club Loxahatchee Group and the League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County, this panel presentation will include:

+ Ankush Bansal, MD is a traveling hospitalist board-certified in Internal Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine and is currently Voluntary Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Florida International University in Miami. The Governor-Elect of the Florida Chapter of the American College of Physicians. Dr. Bansal is the -founder and co-chair of Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, co-founder of Climate Reality Project Palm Beach (now part of the Boca chapter), a board member of the Florida Physicians for Social Responsibility, a COP participant with the Global Climate & Health Alliance, and a Climate for Health Ambassador. His professional interests are preventive medicine through lifestyle change and climate change. Based in Delray Beach, he is the 2021 Physician “Hero” for the Palm Beach County Medical Society.

 + Patrick Ferguson, Esq. has been the Organizing Representative for Sierra Club’s Stop Sugar Field Burning Campaign since June 2016. An attorney who received his law degree from Nova Southeastern University School of Law in 2015, he was engaged in private general practice and local activism for numerous environmental and progressive causes in the Broward County area prior to joining the Sierra Club.

+ Seneca Harberger, MD is a family doctor who sees patients at the C. L. Brumback Primary Care Clinic at Lakeside Medical Center in Belle Glade, FL, and is Program Director for Lakeside’s Family Medicine Residency. He attended medical school at Philadelphia’s Temple University, where he received an MD and an MA in Urban Bioethics. Prior to medicine, he was a high school math and physics teacher in Oakland, CA. After years of focusing on the complexity of life and health care in urban communities, he considers his experience in rural western Palm Beach County as both enlightening and animating.

+ Howard Simon, Ph.D. is a Board member of the Florida Policy Institute and was formerly the longest-serving state director for the American Civil Liberties Union. A CCNY graduate, he earned a Ph.D. in legal and political philosophy from the University of Minnesota. At the ACLU, he helped draft the constitutional amendment to restore the right to vote, challenged restrictions on voter registration and efforts to restrict early and Sunday voting, and helped secure passage of the Fair Districts Amendments curbing partisan Gerrymandering. Following his retirement from the ACLU, Dr. Simon created the Clean Okeechobee Waters Foundation to work with biomedical scientists and physicians who have linked toxins produced by harmful algae blooms to neurological diseases, including ALS and Alzheimer’s.

Moderated by Brent Schillinger, MD, co-chair of LWVPBC’s Health Committee. A past president of the Palm Beach County Medical Society who currently chairs the society’s Opioid Healthcare Response Initiative, he received his MD at Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY.  He has chaired the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs for both the Palm Beach County Medical Society and the Florida Medical Association, represents the medical community on the Palm Beach Ethics Coalition and serves as vice-chair of the Florida Policy Institute a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on the fiscal impact of education, affordable housing, food supply, and health care issues. He holds clinical academic appointments at Nova Southeastern University, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of Miami.

[pdf-embedder url=”https://lwvpbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/LWV-Sierra-Club-Spotlight-Flyer-Rev1-02-24-22.pptx.pdf” title=”LWV-Sierra Club Spotlight Flyer (Rev1)- 02-24-22.pptx”]

Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84141526298?pwd=RmJsenpBa0lYV1hsbU1Pc2JaZzRIdz09#success