Children's Environmental Health Faculty Champions Initiative

Goal: Build health professional capacity to address children’s environmental health issues.

This initiative creates a network of children’s environmental health faculty champions at medical and nursing schools throughout the country, who take a leadership role in integrating children’s environmental health into their academic institutions in a sustainable fashion, train their colleagues, teach courses, provide expertise and support in their institutions and surrounding communities, and serve as a model for how to integrate environmental health into health professional education.

Train-the-Trainer Workshop

Twenty-eight pediatric faculty members participated in a train-the-trainer workshop held on July 14, 2006, in Washington, DC. The training was provided by leading pediatric environmental health experts. To date, these faculty champions have trained more than 1,500 faculty members, residents, and students and continue to work to integrate children’s environmental health into the curricula at their medical or nursing schools in a sustainable fashion.

Planning Committee:

Sophie Balk, MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Children's Hospital at Montefiore
Joel Forman, MD, Mount Sinai Medical Center
Christine Johnson, MD, Naval Medical Center San Diego and Representative, Ambulatory Pediatric Association
Leyla Erk McCurdy, MPhil, National Environmental Education Foundation
Mary Musholt, MSN, PNP, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Nursing and Representative, National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners
C. Fay Raines, PhD, RN, University of Alabama in Huntsville, College of Nursing and Representative, American Association of Colleges of Nursing
James Roberts, MD, MPH, Medical University of South Carolina and Representative, American Academy of Pediatrics
Bonnie Rogers, DrPH, COHN-S, FAAN, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health
Elaine Rubin, PhD, Association of Academic Health Centers

Co-Sponsors:

American Academy of Pediatrics
Ambulatory Pediatric Association
American Association of Colleges of Nursing
Association of Academic Health Centers
National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners

Funding

The project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Additional funding was provided by Baxter Healthcare and The New York Community Trust.