{"id":22300,"date":"2026-04-20T20:43:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/?p=22300"},"modified":"2026-04-20T20:43:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:43:37","slug":"supporting-healthy-communities-this-earth-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/supporting-healthy-communities-this-earth-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Supporting Healthy Communities This Earth Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>April is widely celebrated as &#8220;Earth Month&#8221;, with Earth Day falling on April 22nd. Organizations like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.neefusa.org\/earth-month\">National Environmental Education Foundation<\/a> organize resources and activities that encourage people to adopt sustainable practices to support a healthier environment.<\/p>\n<p>There is a lot of overlap between many of these environmentally-friendly habits and healthy lifestyles. Activities like eating less meat, cleaning up a park, and planting pollinator gardens all have measurable health benefits that can go a long way towards improving quality of life.<\/p>\n<p>As people explore these activities, they often have practical health questions: Is it safe to garden in this soil? How can I protect myself from sun exposure? What are safe ways to handle compost at home?<\/p>\n<p>This is where libraries, community organizations, and other health information experts can play an important role; they are ideally suited to connect people with reliable, easy-to-understand health information.<\/p>\n<h3>Resources<\/h3>\n<p>Here are some go-to resources to help people make informed decisions about their outdoor activities:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/medlineplus.gov\">MedlinePlus<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A consumer health resource organized by the National Library of Medicine. Users can find <a href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/recipes\/\">healthy, meatless recipes<\/a> and overviews on topics like <a href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/householdproducts.html\">clean household products<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/allergy.html\">allergies<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/medlineplus.gov\/sunexposure.html\">sun exposure<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nih.gov\/health-information\/your-healthiest-self-wellness-toolkits\">NIH Wellness Toolkits<\/a><\/p>\n<p>An online collection of resources organized by different facets of wellness, including an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nih.gov\/health-information\/your-healthiest-self-wellness-toolkits\/environmental-wellness-toolkit\">Environmental Wellness Toolkit<\/a>. Each toolkit contains actionable tips to improve wellness and provides links to additional information from <a href=\"https:\/\/newsinhealth.nih.gov\/\">NIH News in Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nceh\/\">National Center for Environmental Health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A comprehensive website that provides information on a wide range of environmental health factors, including severe weather, air quality, and mold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>April is widely celebrated as &#8220;Earth Month&#8221;, with Earth Day falling on April 22nd. Organizations like the National Environmental Education Foundation organize resources and activities that encourage people to adopt sustainable practices to support a healthier environment. There is a lot of overlap between many of these environmentally-friendly habits and healthy lifestyles. Activities like eating&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/supporting-healthy-communities-this-earth-month\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[404,481,475,476,484,161,478,480,217,257,23,211,477,479,405,483,482],"class_list":["post-22300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-health","tag-air-quality","tag-cdc","tag-earth-day","tag-earth-month","tag-environment","tag-environmental-health","tag-gardening","tag-heat","tag-medlineplus","tag-nature","tag-nih","tag-nih-news","tag-outdoors","tag-pests","tag-water-quality","tag-wellbeing","tag-wellness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3001"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22304,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22300\/revisions\/22304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/region_5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}