Educating for action: Improving environmental health and justice through a model Healthy Home

Home based environmental hazards are major contributors to disease, particularly those that disproportionately affect low income, urban, and minority children. Childhood lead poisoning and asthma are prime examples. A community-academic partnership in Rochester, New York created a model Healthy Home, an interactive museum in a typical city home to address these risks. During its three and a half years in operation, over 3500 people visited the Healthy Home. The Healthy Home delivered hands-on educational experiences in a community-based facility focused on promoting action to reduce home environmental hazards. We will present evaluation and follow-up data from visitors, feedback from the Healthy Home's 30 member advisory committee, and the project's evolution over time to assess its effectiveness as a strategy for promoting healthy homes, particularly in low income neighborhoods. Follow-up surveys indicate that most visitors took action to reduce environmental hazards in their home environments. We will also present a comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of off-site healthy homes training with visits to the Healthy Home, impacts on specific target groups (such as refugees), and efforts to replicate this project in other cities. The project's goals are sustained by the partnership of organizations that developed around the Healthy Home. We conclude that hands-on, integrated environmental health education has the potential to reduce home health hazards that contribute to health disparities.