Comprehensive Programs

The healthy homes approach takes a more holistic view of health and safety conditions in homes.  Rather than addressing only one problem in a home, healthy homes workers will need to address a range of risk factors and hazards simultaneously.

State and local programs with a home visitation component that address more than one family health or safety issue during a visit can impact more families and result in more positive health outcomes. Some single interventions can have multiple positive effects. The cost of implementing multiple housing-based interventions can be far lower than if they are implemented individually.

We can learn from the experiences of several healthy homes activities supported by several federal agencies:

• CDC
• HUD
• EPA
• USDA

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

• CDC's Healthy Homes Initiative.
  This initiative supported development of a healthy housing training center. The lead program has begun expansion into a lead poisoning prevention and healthy housing program. This program will take a more holistic approach to preventing diseases and injuries that result from housing-related hazards and deficiencies. The focus of the initiative is to identify health, safety, and quality-of-life issues in the home environment and to act systematically to eliminate or mitigate problems.
• Baltimore Healthy Homes Pilot Project.
  The Baltimore City Health Department Healthy Homes Division developed and implemented an outcome-focused, replicable model to expand an urban childhood lead poisoning prevention program into a comprehensive program to reduce lead exposure, asthma risks, injury risks and hazards, carbon monoxide poisoning, and fire morbidity and mortality.
• Building Capacity in Environmental Health Service Delivery
  Grants were awarded to support community efforts to improve the health and built environment of underserved populations by building effective environmental health programs. Five grantees were funded to implement healthy homes interventions:
  • Iowa Department of Public Health's project to develop a comprehensive Healthy Housing Initiative to address aspects of the environment as they affect housing.
  • Multnomah County Health Department's project to improve the housing service delivery system to reduce environmental health risk factors that contribute to disease and health disparities related to substandard low-income housing and the surrounding built environment.
  • Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services' project to decrease risk factors in the home that lead to injury, illness, and death in underserved populations.
  • The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) 's (website under development) project to identify, educate and resolve environmental hazards in the home; and to develop an ongoing Healthy Home program
  • Kent County Health Department's (website under development) project to build a Kent County Children's Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) with one of its first initiatives to improve the living conditions of children in underserved neighborhoods of Grand Rapids, MI.

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Healthy Homes Initiative (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD])

The HUD Healthy Homes Initiative addresses multiple childhood diseases and injuries in the home. HUD's initiative builds on its successful lead hazard control programs to expand efforts to address a variety of environmental health and safety concerns, including mold, lead, allergens, asthma, carbon monoxide, home safety, pesticides, and radon.

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Healthy Homes (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA])

The EPA offers information about ways to make your home a healthy place. Topics include indoor and outdoor air quality, pesticides, toxic household products, mold, tobacco smoke, radon, drinking water contaminants, and ways to make your home "green."

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Healthy Homes Partnership (U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA])

The Healthy Homes Partnership provides, through a growing network of state coordinators, information about home health hazards and steps that can be taken to avoid them. Healthy Homes focuses on supporting individuals in voluntary actions to prevent injuries at home. It translates findings from the latest research into simple standards and guidelines through a series of products and materials intended to mobilize individual actions and to improve environmental decision-making skills.

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