BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH
MAJOR AWARDS:
United Nations Environment Program, Global 500 Laureate - 1993
Marguerite D'Youville Humanitarian Award, Lexington MA - 1992
Ontario Premier's Council on Health: Health Innovator Award - 1991
World Federalist Peace Award - 1988
Alternative Nobel Prize: Right Livelihood Award - 1986Rosalie Bertell, PhD, GNSH, is President of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health and Editor in Chief of International Perspectives in Public Health (IICPH). Dr. Bertell served four years as Co-chair for Canada on the Ecosystem Health Workgroup of the Science Advisory Board to the US - Canada International Joint Commission (IJC) on the Great Lakes, and currently serves on the IJC Nuclear Task Force. She also serves as advisor to the Great Lakes Health Effects Program of Health Canada, the Environmental Assessment Board of Ontario, and the Environmental Task Force of he new Megacity, Toronto.
Dr. Bertell directed the International Medical Commission - Bhopal which investigated the aftermath of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, and the International Medic 1 Commission - Chernobyl, which convened the Tribunal on violations of the human rights of Chernobyl victims, in Vienna, April 1996. She has received numerous awards and five honorary Doctorate degrees since launching the IICPH in 1984. Dr. Bertell is a member of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, and in 1998 she was elected President of the North American Association of Contemplative Sisters
Dr. Bertell earned her Doctorate degree in Biometry, design of epidemiological research and the mathematical analysis of bio-medical problems, at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC , in 1966, and has been working ever since time in environmental epidemiology. She has collaborated in analysis undertaken in the U.S., Canada, Japan, the Marshall Islands, Malaysia, India, Germany, Ukraine and other countries.
Author of Handbook for Estimating the Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation (1984, 1986) and the popular non-fiction book, No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth (1985), together with more than a hundred articles, book chapters and poems, Dr. Bertell has reached medical, scientific, and popular audiences around the globe. No Immediate Danger, has been translated into Swedish, French, German and Finnish. A Russian translation is in process. Chernobyl: The Health, Environmental and Human Rights Implications, her latest book (1997) reporting testimony on the disaster, is available in English, French, German and Russian.
By choice, Dr. Bertell works with indigenous people and economically developing countries as they struggle to preserve their human rights to health and life in the face of industrial, technological and military pollution. She was a founding member of IICPH, an attempt to institutionalize her growing concern for human survival on an intact planet.