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Trends in Children's Environmental Health
OCHP is working in the US and internationally to track trends, or "indicators," in children's environmental health. Specifically, OCHP is working to identify measures that can be tracked to better understand the potential impacts of the environment on children's health and, ultimately, to identify and evaluate ways to minimize these impacts.
Children's environmental health indicators can be effective tools for understanding children's environmental health in specific geographic areas. These indicators can be used to monitor environmental trends in order to identify risks to children's health, to measure progress towards stated goals, and to target actions where they are most needed. In addition, they can help raise awareness of children’s environmental health and inform policy making.
Below are examples of work OCHP is undertaking to help identify and quantify trends in children’s environmental health at home and abroad.
You will need Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.
Domestic Indicators of Children’s Environmental Health
America’s Children and the Environment: EPA’s America’s Children and the Environment site brings together quantitative information from a variety of sources to show: trends in levels of environmental contaminants in air, water, food, and soil; concentrations of contaminants measured in the bodies of mothers and children; and childhood diseases that may be influenced by environmental factors.- America's Children and the Environment website. Presents the latest information on trends in environmental factors related to the health and well-being of children in the United States, including data on contaminants, exposures, and childhood illnesses. Analyses of measures by race/ethnicity and family income are included where data are available.
- A merica's Children and the Environment reports. Provides links to previously published editions of America’s Children and the Environment, including downloadable files and instructions for ordering hard copies.
Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics: The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (the Forum) is a collection of 20 Federal government agencies involved in research and activities related to children and families. EPA is a member of the Forum and is represented by both OCHP and the Office of Environmental Information. The Forum was founded in 1994 and formally established in April 1997 under Executive Order No. 13045. The mission of the Forum is to foster coordination and collaboration and to enhance and improve consistency in the collection and reporting of Federal data on children and families. Also, the Forum aims to improve the reporting and dissemination of information on the status of children and families.
The Forum's annual report, America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, published in 2008, provides the Nation with a summary of national indicators of child well-being and monitors changes in these indicators over time.
Health Disparities Workshop:
This workshop, held in
Michigan
on May 24-25, 2005, was created to
develop
a scientific foundation to explore the conceptual issues, data needs,
and
policy applications with regard to the social and environmental
factors used to
measure and track racial, ethnic, and class disparities in
environmental
health. OCHP seeks to further the science of developing indicators
by including
measures of the interaction between social and physical environment
that may
lead to ill health and health disparities.The workshop convened a diverse group of environmental health scientists, epidemiologists, social scientists, and public health practitioners to initiate inter-disciplinary theoretical and methodological thinking on the question of environmental health disparities. Next steps will be to apply concepts discussed at the workshop to evaluate social disparities in children's environmental health.
- Workshop Summary Report (PDF) (79 pp, 847K)
- Workshop Objectives and Overview
- Workshop Agenda (PDF) (3 pp, 26K)
- Speakers
- Organizing Committee
- Program Sponsors
- Technical Papers
- Rachel Morello-Frosch and Russ Lopez (2006). The Riskscape and the Color Line: Examining the Role of Segregation in Environmental Health Disparities. (PDF) (52 pp, 599K)
- G.C. Gee and Devon Payne-Sturges (2006). National Environmental Health Measures for Minority and Low-Income Populations: Tracking Social Disparities in Environmental Health. (PDF) (18 pp, 308K)
- M. Soobader, C. Cubbin, G.C. Gee, A. Rosenbaum, and J. Laurenson (2006). Levels of Analysis for the Study of Environmental Health Disparities. (PDF) (9 pp, 201K)
- Devon Payne-Sturges, G.C. Gee, Kirstin Crowder, Bradford J. Hurley, Charles Lee, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Arlene Rosenbaum, Amy Schulz, Charles Wells, Tracey Woodruff, Hal Zenick (2006). Workshop Summary: Connecting Social and Environmental Factors to Measure and Track Environmental Health Disparities. (PDF) (8 pp, 249K)
- Devon Payne-Sturges, William Sanders, Charles Wells, Hal Zenick (2006). We Cannot Do It Alone: Building a Multi-Systems Approach for Assessing and Eliminating Environmental Health Disparities. (PDF) (5 pp, 121K)
International Indicators of Children’s Environmental Health
World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD): EPA launched a UN partnership to develop indicators for children's environmental health at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Partners in this effort are: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), Physicians for Social Responsibility, International Society of Doctors for the Environment, International Network of Children's Health and Environment, as well as the countries of South Africa, Italy, Canada, and Mexico. WHO is leading the effort.- The World Health
Organization's Web site
presents information on children's health indicators
with
links to: the concept of children's health indicators; details on
the global
initiative on children's health indicators; priorities; regional
pilots; and
other resources and contact information. - Several partners developed a brochure for WSSD under a cooperative agreement with EPA, entitled, A Call to Action: Using Indicators to Measure Progress on Children's Environmental Health (PDF) (16 pp, 1MB).
- The World Health Organization developed a report entitled Making
a Difference: Indicators to Improve Children's Environmental Health
as part of the work they are continuing on global
indicators.
or view past issues of
the
newsletter .