Breaking the cycle through better school siting: a collaborative project to facilitate the effective use of EPA’s guidelines with Georgia’s educational leaders
-
Robert Geller
,
Rebecca Watts Hull
,
Denise R. Grabowski
Abstract
The benefits of screening potential school sites for environmental hazards and the special vulnerability of children to environmental pollutants and toxins are well understood. Less apparent, and less widely discussed until recently, are other health concerns associated with school location, such as ready access to healthy food options and opportunities for safe walking and bicycling. In recent years, a variety of stakeholders interested in children’s wellness in school settings have expressed concerns about the trend to place larger schools further away from the communities they serve. In some cases, this trend can worsen environmental health risks, such as air pollution, and reduce opportunities for physical activity, with disproportionate impacts on communities already burdened with multiple stressors. This paper describes a project in Georgia that helps school system decision makers more fully integrate children’s environmental health and wellness concerns into all aspects of school siting planning, through a training curriculum based on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 2011 School Siting Guidelines. Two training modules have been developed. Preliminary feedback indicates that the process itself – convening a diverse set of stakeholders with different expertise related to children’s environmental health, community planning, and school system planning – results in new partnerships and the consideration of other perspectives. Better integration of municipal and school planning and improved understanding of environmental health considerations can improve public health outcomes for the entire community.
This project was funded by a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency, Source Reduction Assistance Grant Program (Multi-Regions Projects). The authors are grateful for the financial support that made the project possible. We also would like to acknowledge and thank the members of Southeast PEHSU for including a presentation of the school siting training curriculum project at the 2012 Break the Cycle conference.
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©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Cyclopedia: sustaining a positive youth development program through community partnership
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- Breaking the cycle through better school siting: a collaborative project to facilitate the effective use of EPA’s guidelines with Georgia’s educational leaders
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Break the cycle of environmental health disparities in vulnerable children
- Reviews
- Effectiveness of foreign food aid initiatives at addressing child malnutrition and the future of United States food aid policy
- Interventions to improve access to fresh food in vulnerable communities: a review of the literature
- Original Articles
- Disparities in arsenic exposure among children and adolescents in the United States
- The use of home-based caregiver assessment to improve children’s health: a pilot project
- There’s a hole in the bucket: rethinking the role of community collected data in environmental justice movements
- Multilevel analysis of small area violent crime and preterm birth in a racially diverse urban area
- Cyclopedia: sustaining a positive youth development program through community partnership
- Traffic-related air pollution and pediatric asthma in Durham County, North Carolina
- Breaking the cycle through better school siting: a collaborative project to facilitate the effective use of EPA’s guidelines with Georgia’s educational leaders
