The DC Environmental Health Collaborative is coordinated by the Coalition for Environmentally Safe Communities and the Children’s Environmental Health Network.

Project Overview

The Collaborative was designed as a vehicle through which community organizations can work with other agencies in true partnership to coordinate shared objectives for improving the environmental health and quality of life of the District of Columbia. This project will create a sustainable mechanism for identifying, prioritizing and coordinating environmental health issues and programs in the District of Columbia. It will focus specifically on those populations at highest risk for environmental disease including but not limited to minority populations, refugee populations and low-income residents living in high risk neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital.

The collaborative will organize and sponsor three public forums through which the community can critique and amend the goals and strategies created by the collaborative process. Community stakeholders will have a forum through the collaborative for bringing local environmental health concerns to the attention of the organizations and services with the resources to address them.

The collaborative will also help each organization, and local government agencies carry out their community awareness and education activities, and to more effectively provide their services to those with the greatest needs. By promoting grassroots representation in the collaborative, it will also provide opportunities for the DC residents to work with elected officials, government agencies and policy makers, and to impact on the process of finding equitable solutions to environmental health problems in the District.

The collaborative will work directly with agencies in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, in particular focusing on identifying agencies and organizations who work towards exposure reduction in high risk wards and neighborhoods of District of Columbia and the abutting high risk neighborhoods of Prince George’s County, Maryland that lie within the Capital Beltway.

 For more information, please contact:

Dr. Janet Phoenix

Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, MPH