WiserEarth Group Support

In 1999, when ICEH initially surveyed the rapidly expanding field of children's environmental health, we noted a number of government agencies, research institutions, and citizen-based organizations undertaking important and often effective initiatives on a wide range of concerns. Some groups were working on legislation and regulatory policies that take into account children's unique susceptibilities to exposures. Others were spearheading scientific research on the health effects that different chemicals may have on neurological development and other biological systems. Some organizations were underscoring consumer issues and catalyzing grassroots campaigns to eliminate exposures in low-income communities, while others were working to ensure greater corporate accountability for the possible health impacts of their products and support for the production of less-toxic alternatives. Still other groups were educating pediatricians and health care workers as well as partnering with parents, teachers and religious constituencies.

Two essential components of this burgeoning field, however, appeared to be missing:

1. a more coordinated, collaborative strategy among the varied environmental health-focused organizations and institutions in order to mitigate duplicative efforts and diffuse tension over "turf" issues; and
2. a project-based environmental health and justice program that could be introduced into existing youth forums and schools in order to educate and activate the next generation on environmental health and justice concerns.

ICEH began to address these gaps by developing the Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment, a North American coalition of leaders in government, academia and advocacy committed to working more collaboratively on children's environmental health issues, and the Healthy Futures Project, a project-based environmental health and justice program for teens in the Seattle area.

As ICEH initial programs became more established, other opportunities emerged. ICEH cosponsored two Healthy Schools Roundtables in Washington and Oregon and organized a blue-ribbon Healthy Schools Task Force in Washington to make and implement specific recommendations to ensure public schools in the state are more environmentally healthy. More recently, ICEH, along with other other environmental health colleagues, including researchers, health-affected groups, health care providers and environmental health and justice advocacy organizations, helped to found and develop a new national network, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE). As part of CHE, ICEH is serving the national coordinator for the Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative as well as the state coordinator for CHE-Washington (CHE-WA).

CHE-WA is a state network of over 350 researchers, healthcare providers, members of health-affected groups, environmental health and justice advocates and other concerned citizens committed to addressing environmental health issues linked to chronic health concerns in Washington State. CHE-WA currently has several working groups:

1. the Climate Change and Health Working Group, which is working to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on human health and bring health issues into the discussion.
2. the Environmental Justice Working Group, which is developing opportunities to create stronger alliances between environmental justice and environmental health and to instill a broader understanding that environmental health and justice are inherently linked.
3. the Precautionary Principle Working Group, which focuses on incorporating precautionary language in the comprehensives plans for Seattle and King County.
4. the Research and Information Working Group, which is analyzing data on environmental contributors to chronic health problems and on the environmentally attributable health care costs in Washington State.

A new Children's Environmental Health Working Group is forming.

Even as ICEH's programs have evolved since 1999, our core commitment remains as solid as ever: to create a healthy, just and sustainable future for ALL children.