287173
Breaking the link between unhealthy housing and unhealthy children: The green & healthy homes initiative
Monday, November 4, 2013
: 10:50 a.m. - 11:10 a.m.
Ruth Ann Norton,
Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Baltimore, MD
The Green & Helathy Homes InitiativeTM (GHHI) provides an integrated approach to control or eliminate all health hazards found within the built environment of the home. Housing deficiencies present proximal conditions that have been strongly associated with adverse health outcomes including asthma, lead poisoning, safety-related injuries and death. The GHHI model uses an original Comprehensive Assessment Tool to identify all conditions in the home impacting environmental health. The resulting Scope of Work mitigates identified hazards through coordinated delivery of health, safety and energy efficiency services. The GHHI whole-house solution sustainably improves resident health while also improving the home's energy efficiency, family wealth retention, and the quality of a community's housing stock. Sixteen communities nationally have adopted the GHHI approach, replacing federal stand-alone programs with a strategy to reduce barriers to intergovernmental coordination, align existing programs, braid funding streams, and coordinate home-based environmental services. The presentation will highlight case studies from numerous partner sites to demonstrate the effectiveness of the GHHI model in improving the health of residents as well as their household finances through improvements in energy efficiency, earning potential and decreased maintenance costs. GHHI's philosophy envisions the combination of Healthy Home principals and Green retrofit activities will serve as a critical set of primary prevention measures which are essential to public health practice. The GHHI platform allows for an expansion of environmental health services that serve a broad range of vulnerable populations from infants to the elderly.
Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and prevention
Program planning
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Learning Objectives:
Explain the GHHI platform and intervention models
Differentiate between the existing silo approach and the GHHI integrated approach
List the components within the built environment of the home targeted by the Comprehensive Assessment Tool for mitigation
Describe emerging findings from participating communities through the use of case studies.
Keyword(s): Housing, Public Health Policy
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have 20+ years experience advocating for healthy housing, most recently designing and implementing the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative⢠(GHHI). GHHI is a groundbreaking program in 16 US cities and, through Clinton Global Initiative America, has pledged to create 25,000 green & healthy homes by 2015. I am a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader, Weinberg Foundation Fellow, and serve as the Chair of the Built Environment for the Sustainability Commission of Baltimore.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
