Recorded presentation

Jerome Nriagu, PhD¹, Adnan Hammad, PhD², Kathryn Savoie, PhD², Hikmet J. Jamil, MD PhD FFOMI³, and Mary Johnson, MSc¹. (1) Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan, School of Public Health, 109 Oabservatory Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, 734-936-0706, jnriagu@umich.edu, (2) Community Health & Research Center, ACCESS, 6450 Maple Street, Dearborn, MI 48126, (3) Wayne State University Department of Family Medicine, ACCESS Community Health & Research Center, 6450 Maple Street, Dearborn, MI 48126

Traditional approaches to environmental health risk management often neglect the knowledge and experience of the at-risk populations and the sociocultural context of environmental hazards. We will describe a family-centered educational program tailored to the cultural, literacy, and language needs of the low-income Arab American population. The goal was to encourage participants to make direct links between their exposure to environmental hazards and the broader socio-cultural determinants of their health. The study involved 160 households in four communities from different parts of Detroit. The intervention process consisted of four visits at three-month intervals by trained outreach workers who worked with each family to identify key environmental risk factors in their homes and helped them develop an action plan to manage the risks. A survey instrument was used to assess their knowledge, beliefs, concerns and attitudes about the environment and their health, assess the burden of diseases believed to be of environmental origin and explore their understanding of specific risk factors for asthma. We learned that the community studied is more attuned to educational processes that emphasizes face-to-face contacts and oral communication; women demonstrated greater interest in environmental health hazards that can affect their family; an educational intervention would be more effective if delivered using community-based “natural helping” networks instead of traditional print-radio-TV media. The intervention resulted in a demonstrable increase in level of awareness and concern about the health effects of pollutants from local industrial sources and significant gains in knowledge about asthma and risk management measures in the household environment.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about a successful community-based intervention program;
• Learn about environmental risk transition and its effect on the health of an immigrant population

Keywords: Community Participation, Environmental Health Hazards

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation