Abstract
This is a summary of an evidence-based public health Capstone project which took place in 2010
in the small community of Chester, PA. The major components of this project include a literature
review, needs assessment, and the development of a pilot workshop intervention on
environmental health for home healthcare providers. The volume and concentration of synthetic
chemicals in impoverished industrial communities is staggering, and much evidence exists
indicating that health outcomes such as low birth weight, asthma and some cancers are linked to
environmental exposures. The Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) in Chester, and the Chester
Environmental Partnership (CEP) grassroots community group, the Women’s Health and
Environmental Network (WHEN), the Academy of Natural Sciences (ANS) and the University
of Pennsylvania Public Health Program provided invaluable contributions and guidance of this
project. The pilot workshop attendee number was small, however it is clear from the existing
literature, the needs assessment and the feedback provided by workshop attendees that
workshops on environmental health for home healthcare providers fill an important need.
Specifically, enhancing home health care provider knowledge about environmental health can:
a) help provide invaluable information to patients, b) enhance the quality of data collected by
providers, and c) contribute higher quality environmental health data to policy, programming,
and epidemiological research efforts.