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Hygeia Analytics Mission and Goals
Four Components of Hygeia Analytics
Tips for Using the Site
Dynamic Presentations
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Hygeia Analytics Mission and Goals

Our mission is to inform, challenge, and deepen insight into the roots of good health. Health in the soil, and among organisms in all other environments impacted by farming. The health of farm animals, fish, and other creatures we depend on. And the health of people and our planet.

p1010012grasshopper We will tap science to connect dots between how food is grown and animals raised, the nutritional quality of the harvest, how farming systems, food handling and manufacturing alter food safety and nutritional quality, and lastly, how our food choices impact personal and public health.

Four Components

The website has four main components:

Timely analysis of important new science (“Hot Science” on the homepage) and major developments in government, industry, or civil society impacting or relating to food quality and safety and agriculture’s environmental footprint (“In the News”).
“Hygeia’s Blog” provides commentaries on recent developments, and strives to help explain new insights from cutting-edge science, why certain things happen, their significance, or lack thereof.
Detailed information on important topics, with a focus on research tools and data sources, methods to quantify costs, risks and benefits, important historical documents, and government and private sector efforts seeking to change the food system in some way.
Interactive tools allowing users to access detailed information on pesticide use and risks, the impacts of agricultural biotechnology, and eventually, food nutritional quality and human nutritional needs.

Items posted on the homepage will always have a connection to issues in play in food and agriculture science, and/or policies shaping our food system and its governance. We will embed links in the relatively short homepage items to other information and resources accessible on Hygeia Analytics, or accessible via HA. In this way, we hope to encourage people to take a deeper dive into issues of personal concern or interest, and will strive to make a few first steps as easy as a mouse click.

Hygeia Analytics promises to be edgy, timely in covering important developments, occasionally funny, well-documented, and accurate.

We also promise to help people who have not spent years studying these issues understand basic concepts and terms, and the interactions happening at the interface of farming-food-health. One useful tool toward this end — our Acronyms and Glossary. We will also embed throughout the page pop-up boxes with a brief description or definition, when and where an unfamiliar but important word or phrase is used. If you run across a term that needs a definition, please email us.

When HA content is not accurate, or fair, we invite readers to make a comment in the moderated comment boxes at the bottom of most items. Also, please point out errors and inadequacies, and challenge us to correct them. Start with an email to Chuck Benbrook. Professional and constructive comments will receive quick attention; trolls need not apply.

Tips for Using Hygeia Analytics

There are many resources with more to come. To help users navigate the huge amount of information that is at your fingertips, we have implemented a few internal systems to organize and connect sections of the site:

Main Menu Bar: Look to the main menu bar to navigate between sections and pages of the site.
Between Page Navigation: Most pages include “See also” links to related content elsewhere on the site. Much of these resources are not easily categorized so we encourage you to look at some of these recommended related pages for additional content.
Recent Posts: Many pages highlight recent posts from the In the News, Hot Science, and Hygeia’s Blog sections. Look to this list of recent posts at the top of pages to find new content on your topic of interest.
Site Map: Just want to look around? Check out the Site Map to see a comprensive list of pages on Hygeia Analytics.
Keywords: To get the most out of the site, use the keywords function to search out content related to many topics of interest to our users. Check out this full list of keywords and start exploring!
Acronyms and Glossary: We have compiled a comprehensive Acronyms and Glossary page for your linguistic edification. Plus, look throughout the site for words underlined with a dotted line, these are glossary terms with built in definitions; simply hover over this word and a definition will pop up.

Please Use and Share Our Dynamic Presentations

The Hygeia team has been working hard to develop new ways to disseminate scientific information that helps put today’s food, nutrition, and environmental issues into perspective. Our goal is to share with a broader audience key insights that will help people understand contemporary issues, challenges, and choices.

Recently we have used the interactive and dynamic presentation software Prezi to create a variety of presentations accessible via Hygeia Analytics, the website of the CEHN “Herbicides in the Midwest” project, or other websites. Not familiar with the prezi format? See our handy Dynamic Presentation User Guide or visit www.prezi.com.

We developed these presentations in the hope that others will use them, and build on them in their own work. We have shared prezis with media outlets for use in the online versions of stories, (e.g., see Stephanie Strom’s piece in the New York Times on glyphosate in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream). We look forward to future collaboration with reporters working on specific stories addressed to one degree or another by one of our prezis.

We will also gladly share our prezis with professors, NGOs, farm groups, church organizations, and others with an opportunity to make presentations at meetings or events. Reach out to Chuck Benbrook or Rachel Benbrook to access and learn how to use our prezis.

Here is a list of prezis that are now available. Several are periodically updated as new developments occur. Or, to view all video resources in one place, check out our Vimeo album.

Available Presentations

Herbicides:

Presentations in Iowa on the public health implications of rising herbicide use
Testimony by US Right to Know’s Carey Gillam on Glyphosate at an EU Parlimentary Meeting, October 2017
“Herbicides in Humans” summary of Rancho Bernardo glyphosate biomonitoring study
Dicamba Watch- detailed and summary report of damages from dicamba drift in 2016 and 2017
Herbicide Timelines- three part series for Glyphosate and Dicamba

Nutrition:

Suite of presentations on the fatty acid content of grassmilk

Scroll down to see a thumbnail of each presentation, click on the image to view.

May 2018 Iowa Presentations

Iowa City

Ames

2018 Fatty Acid Content of Grassmilk Paper

Click here to view more resources and pdf/PowerPoint versions of these presentations.

Short Summary Presentation

2018 Grassmilk Paper- Detailed Presentation

2018 Grassmilk Paper – Short Videos

#1 Grassmilk Health Benefits Video (71 seconds)

#2 Gimme Three Steps Video (44 seconds)

# 3 Grass Makes Good Milk Video (73 seconds)

#4 Choose Grassmilk (21 seconds)

#5 Cows Eat Grass? (40 seconds)

Carey Gillam Presentation on Glyphosate at an EU Parlimentary Meeting

Presentation appears on November 13, 2017 as a guest blog.

Summary of Rancho Bernado Study in JAMA on Glyphosate in Urine

Posted in Section 2C of the CEHN “Herbicides in the Midwest” project website.

Herbicide Timelines

These timelines recount key milestones in the discovery and commercialization, regulation, use, and human health and environmental impacts of glyphosate, and dicamba (with more to come) – focusing on the herbicides most closely associated with next generation, GE crops. These Herbicide Timelines are posted in Section 3E on the Herbicides in the Midwest website. You can sign up for the newsletter for that project to receive updates when new timelines are posted, or check back here at Hygeia Analytics.

Timeline List: