MISSION: To educate individuals in urban communities about lead poisoning prevention and its health consequences as well as how they can participate in lead poisoning prevention measures to protect themselves and others. This program also teaches our communities about local, state and federal lead poisoning prevention legislation.

UPDATE: The goal of this program is to provide 30 community trainings on lead poisoning prevention and Local Law 38 to the health districts of Brooklyn with the highest incidence of lead poisoning, including Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Flatbush and Bushwick. To date, a total of 33 trainings have been provided and a total of 456 community representatives have participated in the trainings. The targeted population included school-based personnel, nurses, housing agency workers, social workers, parents, youth, social agency staff and others. At this time, the Center is working on the 2000-2001 Lead Poisoning Prevention Project, whose main goal is to provide 25 trainings on lead poisoning prevention to the same Brooklyn health districts as last year. This time, the program will make special efforts to reach out to recent immigrant communities, especially the Latino communities, which are at a high risk for lead poisoning. To assist in achieving this goal, the Seminars to Train Outreach Leaders to Prevent Lead Poisoning (S.T.O.P) Training Manual issued by the Department of Health, which trains outreach leaders in lead prevention, will be translated into Spanish by the COEH staff.

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MISSION: To apply a public health approach to reduce illness and death from childhood asthma in New York City by working to empower families, schools, communities and institutions to manage and prevent asthma. To assist in the development, implementation and evaluation of effective asthma management and prevention programs through education, training, research and service.

UPDATE: CitiCAMP is a program funded by the New York City Department of Health (NYCDOH). In partnership with the NYCDOH Citywide Childhood Asthma Initiative, CitiCAMP aims to reduce the burden of asthma on communities at-risk by taking a public health approach to reduce mortality and morbidity associated with childhood asthma. CitiCAMP supports community-based organizations funded by the NYCDOH Citywide Childhood Asthma Initiative by providing assistance in needs assessment, program development, health education, staff development, technical assistance and performance evaluation to community-based efforts. To date, CitiCAMP has worked with 17 community-based organizations that have been funded to participate in the citywide asthma partnership. CitiCAMP has helped these organizations develop their organizational capacity to add asthma to the menu of services they provide to their service population. Many of these community-based organizations serve culturally or ethnically isolated communities that have been historically difficult to reach through traditional medical approaches, including communities with large newly-immigrant populations. The CitiCAMP program has helped community-based organizations develop culturally sensitive and appropriate health education programs and educational materials in several languages and for a variety of cultures, including Latino, Polish, Jewish and Jamaican communities. The CitiCAMP program has also worked to improve access to education and services for communities historically difficult to reach and helped increase the organizational capacity of community-based organizatins that serve those communities. CitiCAMP also works to identify community resources and develop partnerships, coalitions and alliances within and across communities. CitiCAMP efforts in this respect have helped expand the interests, knowledge and skills of community-based organizations to apply asthma management to their organizational mission and have helped elevate people’s expectations around asthma management.

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MISSION: The Hunter College Community Health Worker (CHW) training program, in partnership with the New York City Childhood Asthma Initiative, provides front line community health workers with the skills and competencies they need to empower families to attain asthma self-management. CHWs, recruited from the New York City neighborhoods most affected by the childhood asthma epidemic, serve as a vital link between health care providers, community organizations and the communities they serve. The program trains workers to provide asthma education, case management and advocacy for children and families with asthma.

UPDATE: The Community Health Worker Asthma Education Project, funded by the NYC DOH's Childhood Asthma Initiative, got underway with a 3 week training program for 15 community health workers from a variety of community-based organizations in April of 2000. The 350-hour curriculum for this program, which was written by staff at COEH, is designed to prepare CHWs to work with families of children with asthma in their communities, and to do community outreach and education. Core components of the curriculum include asthma education, asthma self-management strategies, case management skills, home visiting and home environmental assessment and remediation. The curriculum is designed so that CHWs are introduced to a strengths-based empowerment approach to working with families. The training is participatory and interactive with an emphasis on "hands-on" skill building activities. Following this initial training, monthly needs assessments provide the basis for ongoing training for this group of CHWs. A second CHW training for the AsthmaSMART program in East Harlem is expected to be completed in the early Fall. In addition to CHW training, Hunter staff conducted a series of focus groups with CHWs and CHW supervisors to determine their needs and concerns about a variety of topics including: CHW role in the community, recognition and rewards for CHW work and challenges in recruitment, training and supervision of CHWs. Based on the focus group results, the Center plans to initiate CHW networking activities, and to explore the development of a New York City Community Health Worker Institute that would provide ongoing training support to CHW programs throughout the city. Continuing education for community health workers, to be offered at regularly scheduled intervals, will provide the opportunity to update knowledge and reinforce skills gained in the program. Presentations and updates on asthma self-management, general health topics, community resources, public benefits and policy issues will be offered as needed.

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MISSION: Residents in inner-city public housing have long suffered from pest infestations in their apartments. Not only are roaches and rodents a nuisance to residents, these pests have been found to cause significant health problems. Cockroach allergens have been implicated as a trigger for asthma symptoms, and pesticides, which are used to fight pests, can poison children and are associated with various childhood cancers. The mission of the project is to decrease the prevalence of cockroaches and rodents in public housing, and by doing so, reduce the need for pesticide use and the rate of asthma morbidity.

UPDATE: Beginning in 1999, with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2, the New York City Department of Health, New York City Housing Authority and Hunter College COEH embarked on a collaborative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) project in a public housing development in East Harlem: Lehman Village Houses. The theory driving the IPM initiative is to eliminate pests' access to shelter, food and water, and to limit their ability to seek alternative sources of sustenance. Currently in progress, the IPM intervention is educating residents about the program, asthma and the health hazards of pesticides. The project is cleaning apartments and common areas; caulking and sealing holes in walls; and working with the Housing Authority to improve sanitation in garbage chutes and holding sites. Preliminary results from the project have been very positive with significant decreases in cockroach and rodent infestations.

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Fundado en 1986, el Centro Para La Salud Ocupacional y del Medio Ambiente de Hunter College es un programa universitario y multidisciplinario cuya misión es promover el desarrollo de comunidades y lugares de trabajo seguros y saludables; al igual que condiciones medioambientales óptimas a través de la educación y la investigación. El Centro trabaja en conjunto con organizaciones a nivel comunitario, municipal, estatal y nacional, así como también con sindicatos laborales nacionales y locales y la empresa privada en la promoción del desarrolllo de destrezas, mejor entendimiento y acceso a la información necesarios para la solución de problemas de salud pública, ocupacional y del medio ambiente.

Nuestros programas incluyen:

• Manejo de Asma
• Programa de Entrenamiento a Trabajadores de Salud Comunitarios
• Asesoría a Organizaciones Comunitarias
• Manejo Integrado de Roedores y Cucarachas
• Programa de Prevención de Envenenamiento con Plomo
• Entrenamiento Sobre Materiales Peligrosos y Como Responder en Caso de Emergencia
• Programa de Entrenamiento para Trabajadores de Minorias