Key Objectives:
- Review the proposed data and surveillance recommendations from the November 2015 workshop “Environmental Health at School: Too Long Ignored”
- Discuss development of a national suite of environmental health at school indicators
- Highlight existing children’s environmental health surveillance programs
- Understand how environmental hazard surveillance and response in school and child care facilities can be better coordinated at the local, state, and national levels
- Explore tools and mechanisms for identifying children who are at-risk or vulnerable to environmental hazards such as those with underlying health conditions
- Identify opportunities for pilot projects for tracking and surveillance programs by state and local epidemiologists
Brief Summary:
The First National Facilitated Workshop on environmental health at school convened a variety of subject matter experts and parents of affected children to develop research and policy recommendations for addressing environmental health hazards (including, but not limited to, indoor air pollution, PCBs, molds, and chemical mismanagement and spills) commonly found in the nation’s 130,000 Pre‐K‐12 schools and child care facilities. These risks place more than 55 million children who occupy these facilities across the country at risk every day. Workshop attendees discussed data needs and gaps and proposed recommendations for improved surveillance of environmental health at school. Most importantly for state and local epidemiologists is the need to develop a standardized set of indicators that would allow for the assessment and monitoring of environmental health exposures and hazards in schools and child care facilities. Other proposed data and surveillance recommendations include:
- Develop a robust surveillance system for identifying and tracking environmental health risks in schools, including the need to build consensus around which health outcomes to track.
- Review and determine the kind of data that should be collected regarding environmental health risks in schools and how these data can be collected efficiently, including coordination between the public health and education communities.
- Develop institutional tools or mechanisms for identifying at‐risk or vulnerable children, including those that are medically fragile, to ensure that they receive appropriate assistance.
- Conduct pilots of the proposed prevention, intervention, and tracking programs including pilots for tracking and surveillance programs that could be conducted by CSTE and other entities.