5160.0: Wednesday, October 24, 2001: 2:30 PM-4:00 PM

Oral Session

Just for Kids:Communicating Pediatric Environmental Health Risks

The growing interest in the environmental health risks of children requires the development of effective risk communication strategies for this unique population. Children may be especially sensitive to specific environmental exposures. Their development leads to both a dynamic state of behaviors and a changing capacity to understand the potential consequences of those behaviors. And the fact that they are under the care and protection of a variety of adults, including parents and teachers, means that communications aimed at the health risks of children have to be designed to be effective for individuals of a range of ages and abilities to understand. This session will offer a set of presentations on risk communication issues for children's environmental health in different settings and about different risks. Experiences with airborne and waterborne risks will be offered, and insights shared regarding children's, parents', and other caregivers' risk perceptions. Following the initial presentations, a distinguished health risk communicator will offer a synthesis of the presentations, then facilitate an open discussion of risk communication issues for pediatric environmental health.
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement.
Learning Objectives: 1) Identify common elements of pediatric environmental health risk communication in different settings. 2) Evaluate strengths and weakness of different approaches to communicating pediatric environmental health risks. 3) Describe critical elements in an effective pediatric environmental health risk communication strategy.
Organizer(s):John Balbus, MD, MPH
2:30 PMVaccine and disease risk communications
Ann Bostrom, PhD, MBA
2:50 PMCommunication strategies for pediatric asthma
Rebecca T. Parkin, PhD, MPH, Hayley Hughes, BA, Ann Yeamans, MS, RN
3:10 PMIs the water safe for my baby? Communicating drinking water risk to parents of small children
John M. Balbus, MD, MPH, Rebecca T. Parkin, PhD, MPH, Lisa J. Ragain, MAT
Sponsor:Environment
Cosponsors:Community Health Planning and Policy Development; Epidemiology; Public Health Nursing; Social Work; Socialist Caucus
CE Credits:CME, Environmental Health, Health Education (CHES), Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA