Kansas City Community Environmental Remediation And Training (KC CERT)
The healthy Homes Network of Kansas City, Missouri
Children's Mercy Hospital

      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.
    
Behavioral