Faced with endocrine disruptors, Strasbourg will experiment with the “green prescription” for pregnant women

“Today, we are in an explosion of chronic diseases, we know that endocrine disruptors contribute to diabetes, obesity, attention disorders” alerted Monday during the Strasbourg municipal council Alexandre Feltz, deputy to the mayor but also a doctor by profession. Because endocrine disruptors have ever-increasing consequences on children, the city of Strasbourg has chosen to invest, with a new public health and prevention operation, to protect and support pregnant women and reduce their exposure to endocrine disruptors. “We are going to work on environmental issues, food, and support pregnant women to reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors.” This is the whole purpose of the new “green” prescription.

A bit like Sport health on prescription, this device voted unanimously on Monday at the Strasbourg city council is unique in France. It will allow health professionals, such as gynecologists, midwives, doctors, to prescribe to their pregnant patients a prescription that will give access to awareness sessions on the risks of endocrine disruptors and the means to protect themselves. . But also to have free access to healthy food every week, with an organic, short circuit basket. The green ordinance is announced as “a health and social measure which is part of the ecological transformation of the territory by supporting organic and local agricultural production. »

Changing practices

Why specifically target pregnant women? “We know that this is the most sensitive period for endocrine disruptors, specifies the elected official, that the children to come will themselves be impacted by what will happen during pregnancy. »

Already tested between July 2019 and December 2020 with around a hundred women in the medico-social centers for Maternal and Child Protection, the workshops with eco-health advisers have had “very positive feedback” assures Alexandre Feltz. “Of course it changes the practices of women during their pregnancy, but it also changes their practices in general, in their education, in their “living together”, it mobilizes the family, it mobilizes the environment, and therefore it is something powerful,” says the doctor.

Concretely, it will be necessary to wait until next September to benefit from it, the time to set up a course with health professionals, to identify a service provider specialized in environmental health who will organize awareness workshops or even to select an operator for the distribution organic baskets. About 800 pregnant women should be affected by this device, which will be tested for a year. A device which could well meet the same success nationally, we wish it, as Sport health on prescription, also initiated in Strasbourg in 2015.