Advocacy: Healthy People/Thomas

Choose 1 HealthyPeople 2010 goal in which you are interested:

• Environment
  

State the goal and give a short update on the progress for that goal in meeting the 2010 standards

• 8-20. Increase the proportion of the Nation’s elementary, middle, junior high, and senior high schools that have official school policies ensuring the safety of students and staff from environmental hazards, such as chemicals in special classrooms, poor indoor air quality, asbestos, and exposure to pesticides.
  

• Progress = New data sources were identified and baselines established for subojective

Target: 100 percent of schools having such policies.

Baseline: 94 percent of schools had such policies in 2000.

Target setting method: Total coverage.

Data source: School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS), CDC, DASH.


Expand on that goal's...

• Progress = Objective could not be assessed "school policies to protect against environmental hazards (8-20)"Data for this objective are unavailable on the progress chart
  

• Disparities = Data was unavailable or not applicable
  

Opportunities & Challenges (general again nothing directly related)=

1. Outdoor Air Quality = A strategy to reduce challenges "includes a combination of regulatory, market-based, and voluntary programs that target emissions from whole industries or source categories, such as power plants and motorized vehicles."
2. Water Quality - To improve on the water issues in "October 2000 amended the Clean Water Act to (1) establish a national grants program to improve consistency of water quality standards, beach monitoring, and public notification approaches and (2) strengthen national information collection"
3. Toxics and Waste - Eliminating elevated blood lead levels in children (8-11) is perhaps the most challenging environmental health objective.
4. Healthy Home and Healthy Community - No low-cost, practical methods have been available that allow homeowners to assess allergen levels in their homes. This is a major challenge for this objective.
5. The environment plays an important role in health and human development. Researchers have linked specific diseases with exposures to some environmental hazards, such as asbestos and lung cancer. No systems exist at the State or national levels to track many of the exposures and health effects that may be related to environmental hazards. Environmental public health tracking (EPHT) is one way to fill these gaps. EPHT is the ongoing collection, integration, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data on environmental hazards, exposures to those hazards, and health effects that may be related to the exposures.20
6. Global Environmental Health - Specifically water pollution between the US and Mexico boarder is something of concern although, there are efficiencies in the treatment of waste water, the disposal of untreated sewage, and inadequate operation and maintenance of treatment plants result in health risks

Emerging issues (general again nothing directly related)= There are six major content area and within each of these areas there are emerging issues they are as follow:

1. Outdoor Air Quality - collection & interpretation
   
2. Water Quality - monitoring results inconsistency
   
3. Toxic and Wastes - issues are not always resolved after initial intervention
4. Healthy Homes and Communities - increased awareness of the role of indoor allergens
5. Infrastructure and surveillance - studies must also consider other factors such as duration of exposure, susceptibility of the population, and nutritional and other risk factors

Related Bill: This is a related bill because it showcases a movement to introduce an environmentally friendly environment into schools, therefore working to eliminate and implement the following that are directly related to my 2010 Healthy objective as quoted, "...official school policies ensuring the safety of students and staff from environmental hazards, such as chemicals in special classrooms, poor indoor air quality, asbestos, and exposure to pesticides."

H.R.58

Title: To promote green schools.

Sponsor: Rep Kirk, Mark Steven [IL-10] (introduced 1/6/2009) Cosponsors (1)

Latest Major Action: 3/16/2009 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.

Local Representative: James Oberstar