Raising Awareness of the Role of Child Care Providers in Ensuring Children's Environmental Health

The goal of the Children’s Environmental Health Research Center at Illinois is to study the effect of ubiquitous chemicals found in plastics and personal care products on children’s neurological and reproductive development and function. The Center’s research is also addressing whether obesity or a diet high in saturated fats interacts with exposures to these chemicals to increase risk, and whether oxidative stress and/or inflammation play a role in mediating the effects of these chemicals.  An important component goal of the Center is to communicate findings to stakeholders including parents, healthcare providers, policy makers, and child care providers through the Community Outreach and Translation Core (COTC).

Child care providers are particularly important to target as in the United States most children under 5 years of age spend a significant amount of waking hours in non-parental child care. Recent analysis have indicated that endocrine-disrupting chemicals are wide-spread in child care but the knowledge of their risks by child care providers may be non-existent or nascent. To date, the focus of environmental health in child care has been on more immediate safety (e.g. choking.)

We 1) surveyed child care providers in rural, urban, and micro-urban settings regarding their current child care routines relevant to endocrine disruptor exposures and their understanding of the role these chemicals play in children’s environmental health 2) conducted in-depth interviews with a sub-sample to determine the best strategies for targeting messaging 3) developed messaging targeting child care providers illustrating strategies for reducing exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals.