Healthy Homes Projects
Healthy Homes Projects
A Healthy Homes Needs Assessment for Rochester, NY
The primary goal of this pilot needs assessment was to analyze existing data to identify key home environmental health issues in Rochester, determine additional data needs, and guide future healthy housing efforts. This report summarizes City of Rochester housing data from multiple sources, and outlines goals for further assessment.
A Healthy Homes Needs Assessment for Rochester, NY - Pilot Project Report
A Healthy Homes Needs Assessment for Rochester, NY - Report Appendices
Learning from Others: A Home Visiting Model to Improve Clinical Outcomes for Children
Kevin Kennedy, Managing Director of the Center for Environmental Health at Children’s Mercy Kansas City, is a national leader in healthy homes, home assessment, and housing/health research. Mr. Kennedy visited Rochester to discuss the efforts at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City to integrate home environmental exposure and hazard mitigation into comprehensive care coordination for children with chronic illnesses. For 15 years, the Center for Environmental Health has conducted assessments for a wide range of respiratory irritants and chemical exposures in over 1,000 homes of pediatric patients. The CEH conducts home assessments for children with environmentally related disease or vulnerability. Although the majority of children served have asthma, other health conditions include lead exposure and immunocompromised patients. Mr. Kennedy shared his experience – conducting home assessments, structuring and financing a home visit program, and research results relating to home visits – with many Rochester-area academic, clinical, government, and community partners.
With support from the Center for Community Health and the Environmental Health Sciences Center, Mr. Kennedy visited Rochester Nov. 19-20, 2015. Mr. Kennedy gave several talks to community and University audiences, including Public Health Grand rounds, as well as numerous meetings with stakeholders interested in promoting healthy housing.
Rochester's Healthy Home (2006-2009)
Project History
A 2002 Center for Government Relations report showing a lead poisoning rate of 35% in one Rochester neighborhood ignited a spark in our community. In response, the Southwest Area Neighborhood Association (SWAN), a non-profit organization serving this neighborhood, began getting more involved with the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning (CPLP) and learning more about the impact of lead in our community. It became clear that a local direct-action project was needed to prevent childhood lead poisoning.
At the same time, the Rochester Fatherhood Resource Initiative saw the opportunity to contribute to workforce development. RFRI had recently initiated a program called Building Economic Empowerment, Achieving and Maintaining Stability (BEEAMS) to train unemployed men for gainful employment in contracting. The University of Rochester Environmental Health Sciences Center (UR) had also been involved in several direct-action projects to reduce hazards by providing environmental health information, including partnering with another local organization in the Get the Lead Out (GLO) project, which originated in an adjoining neighborhood.
SWAN and RFRI saw GLO's temporary Lead Lab, with its hands-on, practical and interactive displays as an extremely effective way to reach the community. Looking beyond lead, UR noted that national groups have found it efficient and effective to address multiple home based hazards in a healthy homes framework, tackling a number of environmental health hazards at the same time using best practices for the home. In 2006, the three organizations celebrated the grand opening of Rochester's Healthy Home, a hands-on demonstration house much like the GLO Lead lab, but one that would help people find and deal with several environmental health hazards in their homes.
Visitors of all kinds came through the Healthy Home: doctors, nurses, community residents, landlords, and contractors to name a few. The messages of the Healthy Home tour focused on ACTION, providing visitors with information and resources for low-cost solutions to environmental hazards, and connecting them with financial and other resources for more expensive changes. After completing a tour visitors were asked to fill out a brief evaluation survey in which they were asked to think about hazards they might have in their own homes, and then were asked to write down one thing they would do to improve health in their own homes - follow-up interviews demonstrated that about 70% of visitors actually made changes in their own homes and shared this information with others.
Although the Healthy Home is now closed, the original Advisory Council (now known as the Rochester Healthy Homes Partnership) is working to ensure that the information remains available for Rochester residents. For more information on environmental home health hazards, take a virtual healthy home tour. Here you will learn common home health hazards and simple ways to deal with them.
Rochester's Healthy Home: An Innovative Hands-on Environmental Health Demonstration Project
This white paper documents the successes of Rochester's Healthy Home project; details the process of developing the Healthy Home, building collaborations, and interacting with visitors; and describes new efforts in the community now that the Healthy Home is closed. Please contact Katrina Korfmacher at katrina_korfmacher@urmc.rochester.edu or (585) 273-4304 if you have questions or would like more information.
Guide to Replication
Rochester's Healthy Home originated as a hands-on demonstration project in a high-risk neighborhood of Rochester. The Healthy Home was open for 3 years, during which it welcomed over 3500 visitors. This guide to replication is meant to be used as a tool by other organizations to start demonstration projects in their own communities. The guide lists the original displays found in the Healthy Home, and how the partnership developed. Copies of the posters and other materials used in the original home are available upon request.
Please contact Katrina Korfmacher at katrina_korfmacher@urmc.rochester.edu or (585) 273-4304 for more information.
Download the Guide to Replication