Children's Health Protection
Grant Awards to Address Children's Environmental Health in Underserved Communities
| Grant Recipient | Award | Proposal Synopsis |
|---|---|---|
| American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest Pine Ridge Reservation, SD |
$99,940 | Developing the Plan, Capacity, and Experience to Reduce
Children's Environmental Exposures Among the Oglala Sioux Tribe on Pine Ridge
Reservation in South Dakota Developing the Plan, Capacity, and Experience to Reduce Children's Environmental Exposures Among the Oglala Sioux Tribe on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota will plan, coordinate, and mobilize the Oglala Sioux tribe around children's environmental health. This partnership between the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest and the Oglala Sioux Health Administration will build sustained capacity for academic, environmental, housing, and health professionals to address tribal disparities and will fill a major gap in services for children's environmental health. In addition, the project will conduct an in-depth assessment of environmental conditions on Pine Ridge, develop a written strategic plan to address the identified environmental hazards, and conduct a number of home-based and child care-based environmental assessments before initiating necessary modifications. |
| Baltimore City Health Department
Baltimore, MD |
$100,000 | Healthy Environments for City Kids The Baltimore City Health Department’s Healthy Environments for City Kids (HECK) program will protect children where they spend their time: at home, in school, and in child care facilities. HECK focuses on increasing long-term capacity in Baltimore’s at-risk, low-income communities to recognize and reduce children’s exposures to environmental dangers, including lead, mold, pests, pesticides, carbon monoxide, and environmental tobacco smoke, among others. HECK will:
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| CLEARCorps USA Nationwide (13 sites) |
$99,000 | Safe, Healthy, and Green Home Assessment and Remediation
Program CLEARCorps, a national nonprofit with affiliates in 13 cities, was established in 1995 as the first national service program to address childhood lead poisoning through a community-based, family-centered model. CCUSA will use the grant to develop, train, and implement a comprehensive, client-centered Safe, Healthy, and Green Home Assessment and Remediation Program for its national network. The project will be all-inclusive and will target low-income and very-low income (as defined by HUD) families living in pre-1950 housing in under-resourced, under-served communities with serious health and safety risks. The final outcome will be to have a fully-trained and operational program that provides technical assistance to all CLEARCorps sites. The direct impact of the project will be the increased safety and health of low-income children and families living in substandard housing. |
| Farmworker Justice California, Arizona, and Florida |
$100,000 | Healthy Fields, Healthy Kids Farmworker Justice’s Healthy Fields, Healthy Kids project will work in close partnership with three community-based farmworker organizations in California, Arizona, and Florida. Using a team of promotores de salud (community outreach workers), community partners will provide outreach educational activities for farmworker families to improve the environmental health of their children and to build the capacity of the partner organizations to support future outreach and education on this important issue. Local advisory committees will be formed to discuss how to increase the scope of the outreach to connect more farmers with local resources. Sustainability of the work at the three sites will be promoted through close partnerships with three community-based organizations – Campesinos sin Fronteras, Alianza de Mujeres Activas, and Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño. |
| Health Resources in Action Boston, MA |
$100,000 | Boston Healthy Homes and Schools Collaborative Health Resources in Action (HRiA), through the project Boston Healthy Homes and Schools Collaborative (BHHSC), will provide targeted training to Boston Head Start staff and caregivers to build long-term capacity for developing, promoting, and disseminating improved central policies that reflect best practices in children's environmental health to reduce disparities in childhood asthma. This project will:
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| Ironbound Community Corporation Newark, NJ |
$100,000 | Early Education and Environmental Health in Newark The Ironbound Community Corporation’s (ICC) project Early Education and Environmental Health in Newark seeks to ensure that the places in the Ironbound section of Newark where young children live, learn, and play are healthy and safe spaces. This project will prevent and reduce exposures of young children in homes and school settings, particularly early education centers, based on a multi-media, multi-stakeholder, and empowering approach to improving children’s environmental health. This will be accomplished by building the capacity of early education workers and child care centers to address children’s environmental health in Newark. In addition to training family workers, ICC will form a network of stakeholders engaged in early education throughout the city and state and develop their capacity, understanding, and interest in children’s environmental health issues. |
| JSI Research & Training Institute Lawrence, MA |
$100,000 | Lawrence Healthy Child Care Network The Lawrence Healthy Child Care Network project, conducted by the JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. and the Centro do Apoyo Familiar, will reduce exposures in child care settings that affect children’s health in Lawrence, MA, a primarily-Latino, low-income city that suffers from significant health disparities. A majority of child care providers in the community operate in home-based centers, the problem being that most of Lawrence’s housing dates back to the early 1900s and has substandard conditions that pose children’s health risks from indoor exposures. This project will build the capacity of child care providers to reduce exposures in their child care settings and will provide information for parents to reduce exposures in home environments that affect the health of their children. |
| National Nursing Centers Consortium Washington, D.C. |
$100,000 | D.C. Pre-natal and Early Childhood Provider Training
Initiative The D.C. Pre-natal and Early Childhood Provider Training Initiative is a project of the National Nursing Centers Consortium (NNCC). NNCC is a national organization whose mission is to advance nurse-led health care through policy, consultation, programs, and applied research to reduce health disparities and meet people’s primary care and wellness needs. NNCC runs environmental health programs in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, PA. This project will build the capacity of Washington DC’s social service providers to ensure that low-income pregnant women and low-income families are educated about the impacts of home-based environmental health hazards such as lead, mold, radon, carbon monoxide, pest infestation, and asthma triggers on the health of their children. The goal of the project is to ensure that children are raised from conception onward in hazard-free homes that promote their healthy development. |
| Pesticide Action Network of North America San Joaquin Valley, CA |
$98,000 | Building Community Capacity to Monitor, Track, and Address
Environmental Health Hazards and Improve Children’s Health Outcomes in
California’s San Joaquin Valley Children in rural agricultural areas may be disproportionately exposed to environmental health hazards including pesticide spray drift, contaminated water, and poor ambient air quality. Californians for Pesticide Reform (CPR), a statewide public interest coalition, is launching a project in the San Joaquin Valley to build community capacity to monitor, track, and address environmental health hazards as a step toward improving children’s health outcomes. CPR will establish task forces in Kern and Tulare Counties comprised of local enforcement agencies and community members. These task forces will launch community-owned, web-based reporting and tracking systems where community members can post potential environmental violations. Government agencies will monitor and respond to these posts as part of their taskforce participation. The project replicates a proven, community-based environmental reporting model originally developed in California's Imperial Valley that, in two years, has resulted in more than $100,000 of additional penalties and dozens of case referrals for significant environmental violations affecting the health of local residents. Leaders from community groups will be trained through training sessions held in each county so that they can reach out to educate the broader community on the health aspects of environmental hazards and how to recognize and report violations. |
| Sonora Environmental Research Institute Tuscon, AZ |
$60,000 | Community-Based Healthy Child care Program The Community-Based Healthy Child care Program uses a comprehensive approach by addressing multiple environmental and safety hazards with a focus on lead, pest infestations, hazardous chemicals, asthma, and fire and safety hazards. The Sonora Environmental Research Institute (SERI) will conduct its activities through its promotora (community health worker) program, which is a proven method of disseminating information, receiving feedback, assessing and addressing community needs, making changes, and promoting decision-making. By utilizing the strong foundation already established through SERI’s existing healthy homes program, the program will build community capacity and expand healthy child care inspections throughout southern metropolitan Tucson. This program creates the social infrastructure necessary for long-term sustainability. The project will:
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| Texas A&M University Webb County, TX |
$100,000 | Building Environmental Awareness for Teachers and Parents
in Head Start Centers in Webb County, Texas The project Building Environmental Awareness for Teachers and Parents in Head Start Centers in Webb County, Texas is a collaboration between the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio: South Texas Environmental Education and Research Program, and the Webb County Head Start Program. The Webb County Head Start program serves approximately 500 low-income, predominantly Hispanic families and provides comprehensive child development and early education for children ages three to five. The goal of this project is to build the capacity of Head Start parents, teachers, and staff to ensure a healthy environment for children by reducing children’s exposures to environmental hazards and contaminants that may be present in child care and home settings, including asthma triggers, pesticides, lead, tobacco smoke, volatile organic chemicals and particulate matter in indoor air, hazards produced by household practices such as mixing ammonia and bleach, and potential contaminants in drinking water for families without access to municipal water. Parents, teachers, and staff will receive interactive training relating to common environmental exposures, with discussions of recommended methods for reducing these exposures that can be effectively implemented in Webb County. |
| Thurston County Public Health & Social Services Thurston County, WA |
$79,937 | Healthy Homes for Kids The purpose of the Healthy Homes for Kids program is to reduce the exposures of children to environmental health hazards, especially in homes and child care settings located in low-income areas in Thurston County. Building upon previous work on indoor air quality issues in multi-family housing, pesticide reduction activities, and other environmental health education and outreach efforts, this project will allow Thurston County Public Health & Social Services (TCPHSS) to recruit, train, and support volunteers in order to provide in-home or in-child care environmental assessment services. These volunteers and TCPHSS staff will then provide customized low-cost to no-cost remediation recommendations to residents and child care staff. |
| University of California, Berkeley Monterey County, CA |
$99,999 | Center for the Health Assessment of the Mothers and
Children of Salinas In this project, the University of California, Berkeley will expand the reach of the Center for the Health Assessment of the Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) program by intensifying the work UC Berkeley is engaged in with low-income Latino families in Salinas, CA and by expanding this work to state agencies and other California counties. The project’s five-pronged approach includes:
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