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National Healthy Homes Training
Center and Network
2007 Annual Meeting Summary
The
Training Center held its 2007 Annual Meeting on October 22-23, in Charlotte, NC.
Following are the action steps generated from the meeting, the materials that
were distributed, a list of participants, and the agenda with brief notes.
Please contact Tom
Neltner or
Susan Aceti with questions or comments.
Materials
Distributed at Meeting:
Additional Materials Distributed After Meeting:
Agenda
and Notes:
Day 1 -
Monday, October 22
12:00 Welcome and Introductions
12:20 Who Goes In? New Exercise for
Launching Course
Tom Neltner had participants complete the new
"Who Goes In?" exercise. The exercise is
the first of six in the
Launching a Healthy Homes Initiative
course. It is designed to identify potential partners who can
carry and reinforce healthy homes messages. The Launching course
builds an action plan based on this exercise.
1:10 Healthy Homes Specialist Credential
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As of September 30, 2007:
-
Candidates will be able to take the exam at one of
thousands of LaserGrade testing centers across the country starting in
December. They will schedule the exam with the testing center and pay
a fee of $45.
-
Discussed best time to take
exam: at end of course or a few weeks later. Strengths to both
options. Training partners will continue to experiment.
-
We need to develop and hold Refresher
Training classes.
-
NCHH will provide marketing assistance to people
with the credential from the private sector to help figure out the best way to
expand participation.
2:10 Review of Pilot Courses
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Tom Neltner reviewed status of the pilot
courses. See
list of Training Center Courses.
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Two courses - Launching a Healthy Homes
Initiative and IPM in Multi-Family Housing - have moved from
pilot to final.
-
Priority for coming year will be the Healthy
Homes Promotoras course.
-
Action Item: Hold a work shop on the Promotores curriculum
possibly in
Houston. Invite representatives from University of California at Berkeley (Lupita
Chapa), New Mexico State University (Jagan Butler), City of Houston (Brenda Reyes), the University of Georgia (Jorge Atiles),
Migrant Clinicians Network (Amy Liebman),
Anne Willaert who heads up the Minnesota
Community Health Worker (CHW) Project, possibly a Pan American Health Organization representative. The workshop
should be an eight-hour day to
develop the curriculum or at least design the curriculum.
2:45 Year 4 Results and Plans for Year
5
Tom Neltner reviewed the results for Year 4 on the
Training Center's grant from CDC and plans for Year 5. The Training Center
has dramatically exceeded its commitments primarily based on the outstanding
performance of the training partners and the resources that NCHH and the
training partners have leveraged.
Tom Neltner
also passed out the preliminary evaluation report for the Essentials
course. See
Essentials Course Evaluation - Preliminary Report.
For the table showing differences in student-reported skills and knowledge pre
and post training, he asked participants to consider what the negative numbers in
the table might mean.
3:20 Coastal Healthy Homes Improvements
· Armand Magnelli of Livable Housing
reviewed the status of the LSU-Training Center's Coastal Healthy Homes
Improvements course. This four-hour, pilot course is designed for
contractors to identify healthy homes opportunities when conducting rehab
projects in coastal areas. Diane Scimeca of Louisiana State University
explained their plans to enhance the pilot with more specific information so it
is more attractive to contractors.
3:50 Top 10 Issues in Building Science
Terry Brennan of Camroden Associates reviewed his
perspective on the Top 10 issues in building science.
Click here to review his PowerPoint presentation.
4:50 Plans for Day 2
5:00 Adjourn
Tuesday, October 23
8:30 Agency Perspectives – Panel
Discussion
Deb Millette of Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention
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Explained that lead poisoning prevention branch
is transitioning to a healthy homes focus.
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Need clearinghouse
for information on healthy homes and experts – county extension services,
EPA regional staff, HUD field coordinators.
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Need
to look at rules covering grant programs to determine if there is a way to
create flexibility in funding healthy homes activities.
-
Need private sector,
in particular foundations, to be more engaged with healthy homes.
Kathy
Seikel of Environmental Protection Agency
-
EPA
is set up as different offices to carry out various environmental
mandates - the difficulty in this is compounded by
different sources of funding.
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Office of Children's Health Protection is one of the offices that cuts
across lines at EPA, the CARE program is one of their efforts.
-
EPA promotes IPM in three ways:
advertising and publicity (e.g. national webinar), tools (e.g. case studies and
model contracts), and a federal advisory committee.
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Check out
www.epa.gov/CARE -
this is a good program for funding for locals.
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Information on the Children's Health Protection
Advisory Committee is on the EPA website.
Melissa Fiffer of
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development
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Described FY 2007 Healthy Homes grant awards
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Noted that the American Healthy Homes
Survey can provide useful information to healthy homes programs.
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Highlighted HUD's plan for a national healthy homes conference and the
development of a healthy
homes strategic plan
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Explained that the process for strategic plan has been drafted recently, will get input from
federal partners, and then input from the public.
9:40 Revisions to Essentials for Healthy
Homes Practitioner Course
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Tom Neltner explained the enhanced
Instructors Guide and reviewed the References &
Exercises
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Action Item: Students should take both the pre- and post-course evaluation
at the end of the course so the student compares their
knowledge/understanding/actions before the training and after. This
will provide more consistent answers to changes in their subject matter
confidence.
10:20 New Course Review: IPM in
Multi-Family Housing Course
-
Don Rivard of Rivard’s IPM Resources introduced the
IPM in Multi-Family Housing course.
See
IPM in Multi-Family
Housing Course Materials
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Tom Neltner reviewed:
-
He
explained the funding the EPA has made available through a contract with
Battelle for the training partners to conduct the training and provide
technical assistance.
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Action Item: Revise the course so the materials show the wrong thing (e.g. use of
illegal pesticides) with a red circle and line through it and the right
thing next to it.
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Action Item: Bring
in the extension website would be useful to answer questions that trainers can’t answer
in the Essentials course.
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Action Item:
Consider developing fact sheets, pest-by-pest.
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Action Item: Find means to compensate peer educators involved in Integrated Pest Management
programs
11:15 Housing Code Proposals
Tom Neltner reviewed the ten proposals that NCHH and
the Alliance for Healthy Homes submitted to the International Code Council.
Nine of the proposals would improve the International Property Maintenance Code.
See
Proposed amendments to the ICC codes
11:30 Thoughts on Priorities and Next
Steps
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Discussed methods to make the training center
sustainable and to continue to support the training network
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Tom Neltner explained that NCHH will continue to
offer course materials for trainings at no cost. But partners need to
be careful to avoid inflating the numbers.
11:45 Lunch
12:15 New Course Review: Launching a
Healthy Homes Initiative Course
·
Ellen Tohn of Tohn Environmental
Strategies
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Audience for the Launching course is weatherization and health people, visiting
nurses, lead people, housing authority, advocates, etc.
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Getting people to think holistically and getting health and housing people
to work together, can’t just do for lead people, have to plant other people
in the audience.
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Need
to take the cross agency model and take it to lead programs.
1:00 Building Local Partnerships for
Training
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Action Item: Create a web-based map of contacts
in US at national and state (and perhaps) local level. NCHH agreed to
work on this in the coming year.
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Action Item: Consider developing state-
and local-level lists of resources for training courses. NCHH will try
it as a pilot and see how it works.
Weatherization & Energy Assistance –
Arnie Katz & Krista Eggers of Advanced Energy
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Good
audiences to focus on are weatherization professionals, housing rehab specialists, home performance
specialists, utilities, local green building programs.
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Note that for staff of Weatherization Assistance Program, knowledge and competence ranges from very
high to fairly low, both from local program to local program and within
programs.
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Rehab
specialists are another good audience – including city, county, nonprofit housing rehabilitation organizations
- there is often a statewide
CDC association.
-
Home
Energy Rating System
raters are another good audience because they get into houses.
Cooperative Extension Services – Laura Booth
of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service at Auburn University
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With funding from U.S. Department of
Agriculture, more than 20 university-based cooperative extension services
run a healthy homes partnership. See
www.healthyhomespartnership.net.
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The outreach relies on HUD's Help Yourself to a
Healthy Homes booklet.
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Laura Booth is coordinator.
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Program has Joe Laquatra’s new
train-the-trainer course. It covers hazards by category but covers all the issues.
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Montana has developed a training that would be good to review -
www.healthyindoorair.org
Health Resources and Services
Administration – Pat Hynes of Boston University
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Boston University developed a partnership with
the HRSA training center at BU, they work with an informal MOU
with the HRSA training center and are able to reach more
individuals in the public health community, more states
and leverage their resources. There are 14 HRSA training centers.
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Action Item: Send list of Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA) centers to the Annual Meeting participants. Go to
bhpr.hrsa.gov/ahec/ for list of centers.
Housing Education and Research
Association – Jorge Atiles of University of Georgia
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The new president of HERA welcomed participants
to the HERA conference that would begin that evening.
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For more information, go to
www.housingeducators.org.
2:20 Community-Based Action
Beth McKee-Huger and Willena Cannon of
Greensboro Housing Coalition and Ralph Scott of Alliance for Healthy
Homes described their outstanding community-based advocacy work and showed a DVD
of the Greensboro Housing Coalition's bus tours. See
www.greensborohousingcoaltion.com.
The group identified need for grassroots advocacy to
improve the quality of housing in the U.S. to complement healthy housing
training efforts.
3:20
Review of Priorities & Next Steps
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Ideas discussed include:
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Inviting the mayor of the city where future Training
Center meetings are held to attend the meeting.
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Before or after the Annual Meeting, take an
actual day to conduct one of the trainings.
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Going beyond translation of materials and identify
information resources to better serve different groups.
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Comparing all the healthy homes
guidelines available – helping partners understand and compare them.
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Working with partners on different ways of
funding the courses – have partners report back on how they do it
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Focusing on more rural areas where there
are no codes – come up with strategies for those areas
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Making sure there is sufficient geographical differentation
in course materials and presentations.
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Developing model healthy homes ordinances
and codes.
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Keep providing analysis of codes related to
healthy homes.
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Identifying more Spanish speaking
trainers and collect more Spanish translated material.
4:00 Adjourn Annual Meeting
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