Since the CEEH was founded in 1995, staff from our Community Outreach and Ethics Core (COEC) have collaborated with Center investigators on a number of educational initiatives. Through these efforts, a great many K-12 teachers and students have been exposed to the core concepts of the environmental health sciences (EHS).
Some examples of past K-12 efforts include:
Health and Safety Awareness for Working Teens (HSAWT):
This program began in 1995 and was originally a collaboration between the CEEH and the WA Department of Labor and Industries. The goal of the program is to reduce work-related injuries and illnesses in teenagers using education as a prevention strategy. The program achieves its goals through both curriculum development and teacher training. COEC support is no longer needed to sustain the program, which has been successfully funded every biennium since 1999 by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries through an award to the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences. Click HERE to go to the HSAWT web site.
Environmental Health for Educators:
This project, funded by a dedicated NIEHS K-12 education grant, was the Center’s first foray into professional development for K-12 teachers. Between 1997 and 1999, middle and high school teachers from around the Pacific Northwest came to the UW for training in the environmental health sciences and then were asked to return to their classrooms and translate what they had learned into engaging classroom lessons and activities. CEEH faculty helped teach the course and served as resources for the teachers back in the classroom.
Integrated Environmental Health Middle School Project:
In Fall 2000, the CEEH was awarded a seven-year NIEHS education grant to launch the Integrated Environmental Health Middle School Project (IEHMSP). The project supported a teacher-training workshop in August of each year, during which teachers were provided with information on how to incorporate EHS topics into a variety of disciplines, such as math, science, social studies, and language arts. This ambitious project resulted in the creation of a wide-range of EHS and ecogenetics-related classroom materials, the establishment of lasting relationships with numerous teachers, schools, and districts around the state, and evaluation results that have significant implications for project-based instruction in middle schools. Click HERE to download the IEHMSP Final Report.
The CEEH is committed to continuing the important work of educating the next generation of scientists and citizens to the extent that resources allow. In the years ahead, COEC will focus on the dissemination of existing classroom materials, many of which were developed previously with NIEHS education grant funds and are available for download on this site. COEC staff also plan to continue to emphasize the K-20 “pipeline” approach to education, working with both high school students and university students to raise awareness of and enthusiasm for career opportunities in EHS and public health.
Some examples of on-going K-12 educational outreach efforts include:
The Youth Network for Healthy Communities (YNHC) videoconference series:
In the nine years since the project was launched, YNHC has reached 140 teachers and thousand of students across Washington State. It has brought Eastern and Western Washington, rural towns and urban centers, low-income and high-income schools together to seek answers to a broad range of locally relevant EHS issues. (Click HERE to learn more about YNHC.)
Academy for Teaching about Health and Environment Associations (ATHENA): The overarching purpose of the ATHENA project is to improve secondary education across Washington State by infusing the curriculum that is currently presented in high schools with environmental and occupational health sciences related concepts and content. With support from the UW Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS), COEC staff will collaborate with faculty to develop and pilot a workshop that will train high school science, health, and career and technical education teachers in the core concepts of the environmental and occupational health sciences. (Click HERE to learn more about ATHENA.)