Getting in Touch with Your Inner-City Child

On 27 March 2000, over 400 academic researchers, health professionals, community and environmental advocates, and policy makers met to discuss the environmental health concerns of urban communities and the children who live in them. The conference was organized by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.

The Columbia center is one of eight centers established by the NIEHS and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address issues in children's environmental health. The center is based on a new paradigm in which scientific research using state-of-the-art molecular approaches is closely linked to community outreach and education. NIEHS director Kenneth Olden said at the conference, "These partnerships between community and academia are an example of what needs to happen all over the country" to create new approaches for solving environmental health problems.

The conference featured the work being conducted at the Columbia center, including research in environmentally related diseases in children such as asthma, developmental disorders, and cancer. The research being conducted at the center includes a prospective study of 560 pregnant women who live in the inner city of New York. The women will be studied for their exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, pesticides, and other agents that may be related to their children's developing asthma later in life. In the women assessed so far, over half show evidence of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. All of the women show evidence of exposure to chlorpyrifos, a toxic pesticide that may have deleterious effects on the fetus. "These studies underscore the importance of identifying early life exposures and assessing their effects in human populations," said Jean Ford, director of Columbia University's Harlem Lung Center.

Frederica Perera, a pioneer in the area of molecular epidemiology and the use of biomarkers for the assessment of exposure in populations, directs the Columbia center. Center studies, she said, depend on a close collaboration between researchers and community leaders. Said Perera, "Our team of scientific researchers has worked closely with community leaders so that we are doing the best possible research--not only using advanced molecular approaches, but ensuring that the research is responsive to the concerns of the community."

One of the community partners working closely with the Columbia center is West Harlem Environmental Action, a community-based organization that aims to address issues of environmental justice in West Harlem. Peggy Shepard, the group's executive director and cofounder, said at the meeting that "community-centered academic research can yield the data that are needed so that the community can mobilize its residents to affect real policy change." The need for a research agenda that includes community-based research was emphasized by many of the conference presenters. During his keynote speech, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher said that "since children are defenseless against the barriers [to health] confronting them early in life, it is up to communities, in partnership with local, state, and federal governments, to ensure that their environment affords them an opportunity for a healthy start."

COPYRIGHT 2000 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
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