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San Antonio health education center receives $98,000 from EPA

Release Date: 01/23/2008
Contact Information: Dave Bary or Tressa Tillman at 214-665-2200 or r6press@epa.gov

(Dallas, Texas – January 23, 2007) The South Central Area Health Education Center, located in San Antonio, Texas, will receive $98,115 from the Environmental Protection Agency to help reduce environmental risks during pregnancy.

“Let’s Talk Baby-Tox: Reducing Prenatal Exposure Risks” is the name of the center’s project, which will focus on outreach to health care providers and families in a 12-county area.

As part of the project, the center plans to conduct training with 70 health care providers and more than 2,700 prenatal patients on understanding how the environment affects the health of fetuses. The project will also involve delivering environmental health messages to more than 3,200 expectant families and conducting follow-ups to determine if these messages result in positive changes in behavior. Other planned activities include developing a Spanish/English novella that will be distributed to prenatal patients and creating materials on environmental risk assessment and intervention for health care providers and staff in five South Texas clinics.

The goal of the project is to provide a sustainable and replicable outreach program that empowers health care providers and families to identify and reduce environmental exposure risks including pesticides, secondhand smoke, hazardous household chemicals, indoor air, lead, and mercury exposure during pregnancy. These environmental hazards can lead to increased respiratory illnesses, cancers, and other adverse health effects in children.

EPA awards grants through its Child and Aging Health Protection Division to support programs and projects that work to protect children’s health from environmental threats. Additional information on EPA children’s health programs and grants is available at https://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/homepage.htm.

To learn more about activities in EPA Region 6, please visit https://www.epa.gov/region6.

EPA audio file is available at http://region6.epa.gov/earth1r6/6xa/audio.htm#audio012308_babytox.