LEO Network – Helping to Understand Environmental Vulnerability and Change

Speaker: Mike Brubaker, Director, Community Environment and Health, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium

The Local Environmental Observer (LEO) Network was originally developed as a tele-consultation tool, to provide referrals on questions related to wildlife, plant, weather or community change. It is only in recent years that the platform has been applied to describe broader trends. This presentation will explore how to use LEO Network as a measure of environmental change at the local and regional level.

About the speaker: Mike serves as the Director for the department of Community Environment and Health, at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. His department includes four program areas: Environmental Health, Emergency Preparedness, Contaminated Sites, and Tribal Capacity. Mike is originally from Juneau but has spent most of his life in Anchorage. He attended St. Lawrence University and graduated with a BS in Biology. Graduate study in Environmental Management followed at University of San Franciso. His career has focused on improving environmental conditions in rural communities. This started as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s, surveying health infrastructure in Hungary after the collapse of communism. Upon returning to Alaska, Mike worked on cleanup of contaminated former military sites, before taking a job as the environmental program coordinator at the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. Mike started at ANTHC in 2008 tasked with establishing a statwide environmental training program. His work has involved performing community assessment related to climate change impacts, establishing the Center for Climate and Health, and the LEO Network. He hosts the quarterly One Health Group meetings and publishes a monthly E-news entitled The Northern Climate Observer. Mike enjoys getting out into the Chugach Mountains, all year round