Keeping Your Family Safe - Healthy Homes

Monday, March 30, 2009, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Pam Meyer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Peter Ashley of the U. S. Department of Housing Urban Development (HUD) for our internet radio program “Keeping Your Family Safe” (find it at http://www.voiceamerica.com/ on the Green Talk Network). Our discussion was about the Healthy Homes Program. CDC is the nation’s primary public health agency and is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. CDC provides information to help the public make informed decisions and take actions to promote health and wellbeing. HUD makes affordable housing available to low income households, and supports community development and home ownership. Dr. Meyer and Dr. Ashley discussed how CDC and HUD were working together to promote Healthy Homes. Healthy Homes is a century-old concept that promotes safe, decent, and sanitary housing as a means for preventing disease and injury. In our program, we covered the following points:

• CDC and HUD support Healthy Homes by providing grants to fund research on Healthy Homes
• Increasing amount of scientific evidence linking health outcomes, such as asthma and unintentional injuries, to substandard housing
• CDC has a few cooperative agreements with state or local health departments to take a healthy homes approach
• HUD’s focus is not health research so they rely heavily on reviews, such as the National Academy of Sciences
• HUD recently has funded some research, for example Cuyahoga County Grant – home interventions to address mold/moisture problems resulted in significant improvements in the health of asthmatic children & Seattle Grant – studied new green built public housing units on the health of asthmatic children after they moved into the units (breathe easy homes)
• Discussion on research on allergies & asthma in regards to triggers, unintentional injuries, and poisonings

This was our final show for this period, we hope those of you who listened enjoyed the programs. Remember you can continue to access the podcast of the programs at our host page at http://www.voiceamerica.com/ or on our website http://www.keepingyourfamilysafe.net/ under each topic ticker or http://www.futureenv.com/ under the Training tab in the online training section.