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According to the World Health Organization, a clean, safe, and healthy environment is essential for children to develop and thrive. Environmental insults to human health and well-being take on many forms, including environmental contaminants, lack of sanitation, socioeconomic concerns, and climate change factors--to which children are at heightened vulnerability. Supportive interventions in children's environmental health will affect not only the future lives of children but also the lives of families and communities. Translating knowledge to action provides a path forward in efforts to protect children. The 12 critical competencies developed by Del Rio et al. (2023) outlined an interdisciplinary approach to grappling with environmental health threats to children. These associated performance indicators map the proficiencies needed for competent performance in the public health sector and accurate assessment of environmental threats to children's health. The performance indicators for each critical competency were developed and intended as a guide for education and training. Keywords: curriculum development, competency-based education, evaluation, training, maternal and child health, environmental health, Introduction Children have increased vulnerability and can develop short- and long-term adverse physical and mental health effects after environmental exposures, disasters, and emergencies (Clayton et al., 2023; Etzel & Landrigan, [...]

PurposeThe complexities of modern civilization, coupled with challenges including systemic racism and climate change-related impacts, compel public health professionals to break down silos and collaborate towards the shared goals of protecting the wellbeing of current and future generations. This article highlights the growing collaboration between the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and the Environment (ENV) Sections of the American Public Health Association (APHA) as members bring their collective focus to the protection of children's and pregnant people's environmental health.DescriptionThe MCH Section and the Children's Environmental Health (CEH) Committee of the ENV Section are collaborating on efforts to: inform key stakeholders?including public health and health care professionals, child care professionals, families, and youth?about environmental hazards and climate change impacts to children's and pregnant people's health and wellbeing; and provide tools and guidance about how to best protect these groups and how to advocate for climate action. The CEH Committee embraces a health equity paradigm and intentionally centers environmental, racial, and social justice as integral to effective children's health and climate change initiatives.AssessmentProjects to date include multiple joint sessions about children's environmental health and climate change at APHA's annual meetings, publications and various children's environmental health tools and resources, including a toolkit and lesson plan that equips public health professionals to provide guest lectures at their local high schools on climate change and health, and educational materials for caregivers on extreme heat, wildfires, and ticks and mosquitos.ConclusionThis collaboration could serve as a replicable model that can be applied to other interdisciplinary efforts seeking strategic partnerships to address complex health issues.

Competency in children's environmental health allows for the development of interventions that can prevent the long-term and irreversible health outcomes that result from early environmental toxic exposures. Health effects that are thought to be at least partially influenced by early exposures include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), lower IQ, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Despite the value of children's environmental health, there are still gaps in workforce training for those interested in children's environmental health. These gaps in knowledge and training highlight the need for improved ways to build the capacity of children's environmental health professionals. Our work focused on creating a set of competencies for public health professionals interested in children's environmental health careers as a way to meet the demand for children's environmental health specialists. We identified 12 competencies that individuals can adopt to build their capacity as children's environmental health professionals., Introduction Although many children's health problems are associated with environmental exposures (American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health, 2019; Landrigan, 2016), many public health professionals do not have the [...]

Purpose: This pilot project, carried out under the National Strategies for Health Care Providers. Pesticides Initiative, assessed the attitudes, beliefs and practices of pediatricians, nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and nurses in the metropolitan Washington, DC area and the surrounding rural counties regarding health effects of pesticide toxicity and continuing education on pesticide toxicity in the years 2001-2002. Methods: Data were collected from practitioners (physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners) and nurses using questionnaires as well as from practitioners using focus groups. Sites for questionnaire distribution and focus groups were selected to represent a variety of practice types and geographic settings. One hundred sixty questionnaires from practitioners and 43 from nurses were analyzed. These issues were probed further in six focus groups with 29 participants.' Results: Most respondents in both groups did not frequently diagnose or ask questions about pesticide toxicity on patient histories. Most focus group participants were more comfortable answering questions about acute pesticide toxicity, and many relied on poison control centers for assistance with management of acute cases. They expressed less understanding and more uncertainties about chronic toxicity. When asked questions by patients, 64% of practitioners and 69% of nurses felt poorly prepared to answer them. Forty percent of practitioners but only 26% of nurses felt it was important to obtain more information on pesticides. There were divergent preferences on ways to obtain continuing medical education (CME) in general, but a recurrent theme was the need to make CME on pesticide toxicity clinically relevant and one topic among several in a CME conference. Lectures and short courses were the most commonly preferred modes of education among both practitioners and nurses. Conclusion: Educational materials to reach this population of pediatric clinicians on pesticides, as well as other environmental health topics, should make the case justifying the importance of the topics, highlight information of clinical relevance, and use a variety of media. These results should be confirmed before being generalized to a broader group of clinicians, although the consistency of findings between focus groups suggests they are robust, at least for this geographic area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]