227 - Environmental Medicine: Clinical Cases and Pearls

Session Description: Environmental medicine is gaining momentum as climate change and pollution-related exposures increasingly impact patient health. This session focuses on translating environmental medicine principles into routine clinical care: incorporating a streamlined exposure history, conducting risk assessments, selecting targeted diagnostic tests, delivering evidence-based counseling, coordinating with public health resources, and aligning documentation, coding, and billing. Through expert-led, case-based discussions, healthcare professionals will practice applying these steps at the bedside and in outpatient settings. Health care professionals in occupational and environmental medicine are uniquely positioned to lead this work and help embed these practices across clinical teams and health systems.

Educational Gaps: Environmental medicine is an emerging field, and there is a need for additional education on this topic, especially since most occupational and environmental medicine healthcare professionals have not received formal training. As patients seek information on environmental health, healthcare professionals will need to be ready with evidence-based medicine presented using risk communication tools.

Is this session being sponsored by an ACOEM Section or Component?: Yes, it will be sponsored by the EH section. Dr. Berenji, chair of the section, will also be a part of this presentation.

Has this session previously been presented?: No.

The AOHC 2026 theme is Healthy workers. Healthy world: This session will support the theme of Healthy World as one of the key underpinnings of environmental health is risk management. Through our session’s cases, we will highlight ways that healthcare professionals can incorporate environmental health principles into their practices, including risk mitigation strategies to keep patients healthy!