As a physician and public health researcher, Health Policy and Management Research Professor Janet Phoenix, MD, MPH, knows that lead poisoning is completely preventable, which makes the ongoing contamination crises in Flint, Mich., and East Chicago, Ind., all the more heartbreaking. She was delighted to be able to capitalize on her wide-ranging experiences in preventing children’s exposure to lead to help produce an important report aimed at helping spread the word on how to reduce and respond to lead exposures.
The report, 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure, is published by the Pew Charitable Trusts. It presents an assessment of the risks communities face together with solutions for the federal, state, and local levels. Aid from The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, a national initiative designed to promote the use of health impact assessments (HIAs) as a decision-making tool for policymakers, was key to helping the project move forward. “I was honored to be invited to participate in this project because of my expertise in lead poisoning prevention. It means so much to me to be able to help ensure that what happened in Michigan will never happen again, and to help the families whose lives have been shattered by the crisis,” says Dr. Phoenix, whose expertise led the U.S. federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to appoint her to its Lead Poisoning Prevention Advisory Committee.
The contamination crises, together with a surge of news reports about lead risks in communities across the country, have shone a national spotlight on the problem of childhood lead exposure. The increased public awareness and scientific evidence that lead poisoning is preventable make this a critical moment for action to protect the nation’s children, enhance their opportunities to succeed, and reduce costs to taxpayers, the new report points out.
The Health Impact Project team of which Dr. Phoenix was a part assessed the implications of childhood lead exposure and performed a cost-benefit analysis of various policies to prevent and respond to the problem. The team conducted a literature review, case studies, interviews, national listening sessions, focus groups, and quantitative analyses using models developed by Altarum Institute the Brookings Institution, Child Trends, and Urban Institute. Other members of the team included staff from Altarum, Child Trends, Urban Institute, Trust for America’s Health, and the National Center for Healthy Housing.
The team analyzed existing policies for their impacts on public health and health equity, the concept that all people should have the same opportunity to be healthy. The diverse group of advisers and experts for the project included families whose children have suffered the toxic effects of lead.
“This kind of project gets to the core of public health, and the benefits of implementing the report’s recommendations can last for multiple generations over the course of decades. We need to get this right,” Dr. Phoenix says. Her wide-ranging experiences have also included managing the National Lead Information Center, a federally funded hotline and clearinghouse, and serving on a second federal advisory committee, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA’s) Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee. She also consulted for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the EPA in efforts to eliminate the use of leaded gasoline. She served as the Director of Health Education for the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, a national advocacy organization now known as the Alliance for Healthy Housing. She also designed three national media campaigns on lead poisoning prevention and has written curriculums on environmental lead poisoning.