State and Local Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program
Project Number1H64EH000164-01
Contact PI/Project LeaderHUNTER, PAUL
Awardee OrganizationMASSACHUSETTS STATE DEPT OF PUB HEALTH
Description
Abstract Text
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention
Program (MACLPPP) is seeking funding from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention as a competitive grantee. Requested CDC funds will be used to enhance our
extensive childhood lead poisoning prevention program which has been a part of the
Massachusetts Department of Public Health for over twenty-five years. The program
includes comprehensive case management teams consisting of a nurse case manager,
environmental health inspector and family advocates. These components form a cohesive
design which provides families with both medical and environmental intervention as
called for by the Massachusetts's Lead Law, one of the strongest primary prevention
statutes in the nation. CLPPPP staff, funded by CDC, is also responsible for health
education, surveillance and epidemiology, data management, program management,
fiscal and information technology support.
The population, geographic and economic composition of Massachusetts results in a
significant lead burden for children in our jurisdiction. The 1990 US Census indicates
that Massachusetts has the second highest percent of pre-1950 housing units, or 46.8% of
all housing, exceeded only by New York State, with 47.1%. CDC's own data indicates
that there are 58, 454 children living in poverty in Massachusetts; 36,900 of whom live in
homes built before 1950. In state fiscal year 2005 there were 3,187 Massachusetts
children under the age of six who had lead levels of 10 ug/dL or greater. This is a rate of
1.4%, which is comparable to the national rate of 1.6% in the 1999-2002 NHANES
survey. This data on screening and incidence considered in conjunction with our housing
stock and our array of both urban and rural communities absolutely illustrates the need
for continued CDC support for lead poisoning prevention in Massachusetts.
Funding from CDC will ensure that MACLPPP continues comprehensive efforts to
provide primary and secondary prevention services to children and their families
throughout the commonwealth. The need for these resources will be increased as
MACLPPP builds capacity and implements a system-based framework established in our
strategic elimination plan to end childhood lead poisoning by 2010. As part of this plan,
the Community Mobilization Network initiatives are underway with active programs in
three of our highest risk communities. In 2006, MACLPPP plans to reconvene or
Strategic Advisory Committee to share the accomplishments of these communities and
explore implementation options of other key initiatives. In addition to our community
mobilization efforts, MACLPPP has made strides towards building in-roads with Refugee
and Immigrant Health Program (RIHP), including incorporating lead-related housing
issues into a required questionnaire used to identify appropriate housing when placing
refugee families.
Massachusetts has afforded families with comprehensive case management services since
1982. Our case management system consists of a three-tiered approach addressing the
medical, environmental, and social needs of a family. Furthermore, we continue to see
significant progress in primary prevention and improvement of our housing through
private sector inspections and remediation, which is due in large part to the strength of our statute and regulations. MACLPPP will use the first budget period to evaluate and
formalize our policies and procedures to produce a finalized written case management
plan.
A critical element in the implementation of many of our major initiatives in Fiscal Year
2006 will be the utilization of the electronic case management system, referred to as the
Kyran application. This application allows for the collection of multiple test results for an
individual child over years. Furthermore the application allows for multiple children and
their corresponding blood tests to be related to an individual address. Extensive work
flows for the medical, home visiting, and environmental components have been
developed which permits us to track the timeliness and effectiveness of our services. Our
epidemiology component continues to track linkages with our data to Medicaid data.
Moreover, MACLPPP is preparing to begin a data sharing project with Massachusetts's
Women, infants and Children program. MACLPPP is looking forward to developing and
enhancing our application allowing greater opportunities for extensive and in-depth
program evaluation and surveillance capabilities. One of these new opportunities will
involve working with geocoded environmental data to generate an environmental annual
report, similar to the Massachusetts Needs Assessment on screening, which will present
inspectional and remediation activities by city and town.
Primary Prevention efforts continue to be one of MACLPPP's great strengths.
MACLPPP is currently preparing a Request for Responses to competitively procure local
community-based lead poisoning prevention health education contracts. The recipients of
these Lead Health Education Trust Fund contracts will be required to organize and
conduct 20 health education presentations annually, attend at least 8 health fairs or other
local health events, distribute lead poisoning prevention health education materials
throughout their region, and to plan and carry out local Lead Poisoning Prevention Week
activities. In addition to our health education activities, environmental primary prevention
efforts are still vigorous. As mentioned previously, Massachusetts has a well developed
private sector responsible for a significant amount of inspections and remediation work in
the state. MACLPPP environmental staff provides vital technical assistance to private
lead inspectors, deleading contractors, and homeowners trained and authorized to do
some limited deleading activities, in an effort to ensure these activities are done in a
manner that protects the public's health and meets regulatory requirements. We continue
to authorize owners to do specific deleading activities following regulatory guidelines
similar to the federal lead safe work practices. To date we have authorized over 6000
owners and owner's agents to undertake low and moderate risk deleading activities on
their homes.
MACLPPP maintains on-going partnerships with sister agencies like Medicaid, Women
Infants and Children program as well as local grantees, community mobilization
networks and boards of heath. Through this work we hope to achieve a solid and
sustainable framework of both primary and secondary prevention measures that protects
children from lead poisoning, improves our housing stock and helps us move towards the
elimination lead poisoning by 2010.
No Sub Projects information available for 1H64EH000164-01
Publications
Publications are associated with projects, but cannot be identified with any particular year of the project or fiscal year of funding. This is due to the continuous and cumulative nature of knowledge generation across the life of a project and the sometimes long and variable publishing timeline. Similarly, for multi-component projects, publications are associated with the parent core project and not with individual sub-projects.
No Publications available for 1H64EH000164-01
Patents
No Patents information available for 1H64EH000164-01
Outcomes
The Project Outcomes shown here are displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Institutes of Health. NIH has not endorsed the content below.
No Outcomes available for 1H64EH000164-01
Clinical Studies
No Clinical Studies information available for 1H64EH000164-01
News and More
Related News Releases
No news release information available for 1H64EH000164-01
History
No Historical information available for 1H64EH000164-01
Similar Projects
No Similar Projects information available for 1H64EH000164-01