Online Program

324257
Green & Healthy Homes Initiative: Improving Health, Economic, and Social Outcomes Through Integrated Housing Intervention


Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Ruth Ann Norton, BA, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Baltimore, CA
Brendan Wade Brown, MHS Environmental Health Science, Policy & Innovation, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI), Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Baltimore, MD
Poor quality housing is an ongoing environmental injustice placing a significant burden on low-income and minority families. The Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) in Baltimore, MD, grew out of the historical healthy homes work of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, an organization dedicated to using housing as a platform for health to ensure environmental and social justice for families and children in low-income communities. GHHI's Healthy Homes Demonstration Project utilized the standards and practices created by GHHI: A Holistic Housing Assessment coupled with environmental health education and combined as an integrated environmental health and energy housing intervention for children with asthma, ages 2–14. The project braids resources from healthy homes, lead hazard reduction, weatherization, and energy efficiency projects to form a single multi-component, multi-factorial intervention. Findings from the health surveys at intake and six months after the intervention provide evidence of the impact on the reduction of asthma symptomatic episodes, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations, while showing improvements in school attendance and parents' work attendance. Findings will provide evidence that improved health outcomes and more stable and productive homes in primarily African American, low-income neighborhoods are related to the mitigation of asthma triggers and home-based environmental health hazards. The findings will also demonstrate reduction in energy use and cost savings for families as well as productivity gains resulting from improved work and school attendance. Upstream integrated housing interventions are an effective means to improve health, economic, and social outcomes for children diagnosed with asthma.

Learning Areas:

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Biostatistics, economics
Chronic disease management and prevention
Environmental health sciences
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Explain the GHHI platform and integrated housing intervention model that combines weatherization/ energy efficiency activities with Healthy Homes practices for urban children with asthma; Describe the extent of the health disparity of uncontrolled asthma in relation to the demographics and community needs of target population; Differentiate between the existing silo approach and the GHHI braiding approach; Discuss the project findings that demonstrate upstream integrated housing interventions are an effective means to improve health, economic, and social outcomes for children diagnosed with asthma; and formulate a business case that identifies sources of sustainable financing for upstream housing interventions.

Keyword(s): Environmental Justice, Asthma

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Brendan Brown, MHS-Environmental Health, is the organization’s lead public health researcher and evaluated the Healthy Homes Demonstration program over three years and was co-author of the resulting publication. As an evaluator with a strong background in risk analysis and communication; he is responsible for performing comprehensive research on public health, energy and housing to support organizational goals. He has a strong interest in environmental justice, public policy, evidence-based interventions, community-based participatory research and health education.
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.