Rochester's Healthy Home

Initial Partners

SWAN , a 40-year-old organization with a $1.3 million annual budget, has become increasing involved in lead issues over the past few years.  SWAN has a successful program for middle school youth called Building Blocks; a recent Building Blocks activity was the production of a video on lead hazards.  SWAN has extensive experience in organizing and outreach to both children and adults.  SWAN has demonstrated both the will and capacity to be productive a partner in lead poisoning prevention efforts, and manages the outreach component of the Healthy Home project.

The Rochester Fatherhood Resource Initiative (RFRI) has committed itself to train, support, and help find employment for fathers in economically depressed areas of Rochester. RFRI has committed to focus on training these men in lead hazard assessment and control. RFRI manages and oversees the physical aspects of constructing, operating, and maintaining the Healthy Home.

The University of Rochester's Environmental Health Sciences Center Outreach Program has been actively involved in developing community-based lead poisoning prevention efforts in Rochester for over two years. Building on the experience with the Get the Lead Out project, which included a Lead Lab, the EHSC supports the Healthy Home project by drawing on our access to national resources on environmental health, developing educational materials and messages, and evaluating the success of the project. This project fits with the EHSC's outreach program's mission of translating environmental health information to meet community needs, and the particular interest of its Community Advisory Board to integrate the treatment of lead poisoning prevention with other home-based environmental health hazards.