Kansas City Community Environmental Remediation And Training (KC CERT)

Objective: Our overall objective is to test the hypothesis that the health of children with chronic respiratory symptoms or chronic exposures to environmental hazards can be improved through a combination of standard home maintenance interventions and a set of interim controls and targeted repair interventions.

I. Background:

The Bi-State Kansas City Enhanced Enterprise Community (KCEEC) is one of pervasive poverty, unemployment and general distress. This same area is also an area of poor environmental health with a disproportionate number of children with lead poisoning, asthma, and home injuries.

In May 2001, the Metropolitan (Kansas City) Health Council released a report urging the implementation of strategies to address this growing concern. They stated, “Environmental assessments and interventions in homes, schools, and workplaces are needed to promote indoor air quality and thereby help prevent asthma and asthma flare-ups,” in combination with the need for, “trained community-based peer educators needed to work with families/communities in areas of high asthma incidence,”. The need for major rehabilitation is echoed in the 1999 Consolidated Plan, as well as by most community development and housing officials.

The KC CERT project responds to these concerns by demonstrating low-cost, replicable intervention strategies that can have an impact on the health and safety of children and their families. By providing training and employment opportunities to residents in high-risk areas to assess, prevent and remediate environmental hazards, this project promotes sustained systematic change within the KCEEC.