1 iJEPH. 2019, 2(2): e-019. Doi: 10.18041/2665-427X/ijeph.2.5674 Punto de vista ISSN: 2665-427X Fundación Valle del Lili. Cali, Colombia. Correspondence: Juan Esteban Gomez. uanesgomez27@hotmail.com Received: 5 May 2019 Accepted: 17 August 2019 Published: 22 September 2019 Keywords: Environmental health, dimension, Colombia, decennial plan Citation: Gómez JE. Current portrait of environmental health dimension in Colombia, based on decennial Health Plan 2012-2021; Problems and challenges. IJEPH. 2019; 2(2): e-019. Doi: 10.18041/2665- 427X/ijeph.2.5674 Current portrait of environmental health dimension in Colombia, based on decennial Health Plan 2012- 2021; Problems and challenges Retrato actual de la dimension de salud ambiental en Colombia basado en el plan decenal de Salud 2012- 2021; Problemas y desafíos Juan Esteban Gómez Public health, as a commitment to society, seeks an ideal in health. In order to achieve its objective, it proposes diferent models that include various actions that govern an entire territory. In Colombia, this involves ten-year health plans, understood as a social pact and a citizen mandate, which defnes the action between the actors and the public, private, and community sectors. Tis should create conditions that guarantee comprehensive wellbeing and quality of life across the country, allowing the articulation of health in all public policies regarding human, economic, environmental and social development (1). Te Ten-Year Public Health Plan 2012-2021 is the navigation chart for public health in Colombia. It proposes the lines of work that are necessary to respond to the current challenges in public health and to consolidate, within the framework of the social protection system, the technical capacities at the national and territorial levels for the planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation of interventions in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals proposed by the UN (2000) (2). Te Ministry of Health and Social Protection was in charge of the construction process of the plan, in accordance with Law 1438 of 2011 (3). Te application and operational materialization implies, however, a territorial leadership of governors and mayors, in order to achieve integration and the commitment of all sectors and actors within the territory. Te plan is comprehensive, because it is proposed based on priority dimensions for the lives of all people and it is also dynamic because it is permanently reoriented based on the evaluation of its own results. Te ten-year health plan incorporates diferent complementary approaches such as: 1) a rights- based approach; 2) gender perspective and life cycle approach; 3) diferential approach 4) the model of Social Determinants of Health. It has eight (8) priority dimensions and two (2) transversal dimensions that represent the fundamental aspects for the wellbeing and quality of life of people and their communities, which, due to their importance, should be intervened, preserved or improved (2). Te frst priority dimension mentioned in the ten-year health plan is environmental health, which corresponds to a set of essential policies, which are related to the factors that surround people - physical, chemical, biological and social - which could afect health. Environmental health is therefore based on disease prevention and the creation of favorable environments and spaces to promote quality of life and health. Improving the quality of life denotes an advance in the population and a decrease in health-related costs. It helps to reduce mortality and morbidity in a representative way, in order to ensure that the population is productive at all times (4). Human beings, thanks to their intelligence and adaptability, have had the ability to inhabit, in a symbiotic way, almost all ecosystems on earth; allowing them to take advantage of the natural resources that these provide. For this reason, activities that afect these environments should be reduced and controlled, including illegal mining, uncontrolled massive deforestation, commercialization of animals, over-exploitation of resources, indiscriminate use of non-renewable energy, atmospheric pollution of air and water, over grazing and others. All these facts contribute to the generation of climate change, a loss of biodiversity, and to the appearance of the greenhouse efect. If these environmental risks are not identifed and control mechanisms are not established, the individual, the family and society, as a whole, will be afected (5). Improving the quality of life and health of the population not only requires actions in pro of the environmental determinants of health, but also requires participatory processes organized around specifc environmental settings. Operational execution should therefore be carried out through: