Berkeley research scientist and lecturer
Amy Kyle spends most of
her time viewing science from the
perspective of a policymaker, and policymaking
from the viewpoint of a scientist.
Her aim is to explore—and ultimately
improve—how scientific knowledge
is used in making policy decisions,
define what makes certain scientific results “actionable” in the policy realm, and
to develop methods that can integrate scientific knowledge with the types of deliberative
processes necessary to make
policy decisions.
Kyle came to Berkeley’s School of
Public Health in 1990, after more than a
decade working for the state of Alaska—
including five years as the state’s deputy
commissioner for the Department of Environmental
Conservation.
One of the main questions Kyle asks
now is, “How can we better translate the
things that we understand as scientists
in ways that are relevant to people who
are thinking about policy questions? This
becomes more and more important as we
better understand the many ways that environmental
factors affect health and the
particular vulnerability of children.”
“There are many very practical, tangible
decisions being made about things
that affect people’s health, and there is a
lot of scientific knowledge that is being
generated that’s pertinent to these kinds
of questions,” Kyle explained, “but the
scientific knowledge doesn’t always percolate
over into the realm where these
decisions are made. And scientists don’t
always appreciate that other factors besides
technical knowledge affect policy
deliberations.”
With a particular interest in policy
development for children, Kyle notes
that “Our policies have not kept up with
what we have learned about how environmental
factors affect children, both indoors
and outdoors.” She worked with
state health and environmental agencies
and experts from a wide range of disciplines
to develop an agenda to address
environmental factors that contribute to
asthma in children. With colleagues from
US EPA, she developed the first national,
integrated assessment of environmental
factors and related health
outcomes for children, which
has been used as a model for a
similar assessment recently released
by the Council on Environmental
Cooperation for the
US, Mexico, and Canada.
Recently, she has started to
look at how biomonitoring can
answer questions of interest to
policy makers and to the public.
This relates to current debates
about whether California
should institute a biomonitoring
program. A bill to establish
a program to monitor for designated
chemicals in Californians
was vetoed last year but
re-introduced this year.
Working with Kevin Marsee
of the SPH Joint Medical Program,
Kyle is using case studies
based on existing biomonitoring
projects to examine what makes it
possible to answer questions that people
are concerned about, such as: what chemicals
are present in people and in what
combinations; are these levels increasing
or decreasing; and are sensitive populations
affected?
Kyle’s projects often involve methods
to represent environmental or medical
monitoring data in forms understandable
to lay audiences. “Scientists and
researchers are trained to think in quantitative
terms and to think with data, but
most people are not. They need to be able
to see what we see in the data. Indicators
or measures of health effects can provide
this.” She cites the US EPA’s Air Quality
Index, which describes daily air quality on
a scale from “good” to “very unhealthy,”
published in many newspapers as a well
known, albeit simplistic, indicator. More
such tools are needed, said Kyle, who has
developed a number of them, including
one that represents air quality as it relates
to health over the long-term.
“In a democractic country,” Kyle
said, “we need to equip people to participate
in debates and decisions about
the environment and health. Part of our
mission should include providing for
translation of scientific knowledge for the
policy world.”
