The Jeonbuk Special Self-Governing Province Environmental Health Center (Director Kim Yong-hyun) and the Jeonbuk Green Environment Support Center (Director Kim Hyun-woo) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on May 26 at Jisandang, Jeonbuk National University (JBNU), to jointly address environmental health issues in the Jeonbuk region and to protect residents' health and foster a sustainable local community.

As public attention grows regarding health impacts from various environmental hazards such as the climate crisis, air pollution, household chemicals, and microplastics, the importance of locally based investigations and research, environmental health services, and risk communication to address environmental problems closely tied to regional industrial structure, living environments, and climatic characteristics has continued to be raised.

Through this agreement, a cooperative system has been established linking the Green Environment Support Center's capacity for environmental technology support with the Environmental Health Center's functions for health impact investigation, research, and education. Based on this, the two organizations have agreed to pursue an integrated response to regional environmental problems and associated health impacts.

The main elements of the agreement include identifying and jointly responding to regional environmental health issues, monitoring environmental hazardous factors and collaborating on health impact investigations and research, climate crisis response risk communication, strengthening environmental health education workforce capacity, sharing information to build environmental health big data, raising local residents' awareness, and jointly holding seminars, forums, and academic events, among others.

The two organizations plan to form a working-level consultative body to carry out joint investigations and collaborative projects in phases and to strengthen the foundation for linking region-centered environmental health policies and projects.

Director Kim Yong-hyun stated, “This agreement strengthens the cooperative network among regional environmental health specialized institutions and provides an opportunity to establish a regional response system to protect residents' health in the era of the climate crisis. We will continue to cooperate to expand environmental health services that residents can experience firsthand and to improve environmental welfare.”