Paper
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Environmental Health Threats to Rural Low-Income Children
Patricia Butterfield, PhD, RN, FAAN, Psychosocial and Community Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA and Wade G. Hill, RN, PhD, 207 Sherrick Hall, Montana State University College of Nursing, Bozeman, MT, USA.
There is evidence that children in rural Western communities may be disproportionally exposed to environmental agents associated with mining and agriculture. Such agents include lead, arsenic, and radon. Compared with children living in higher-income families, those with limited finances may encounter additional risks associated with parents' jobs (e.g., “take-home toxins”) and substandard housing. Environmental Risk Reduction Through Nursing Interventions and Education (ERRNIE) is a phased randomized controlled trial designed to test a home-based intervention on adults' environmental knowledge and self-efficacy, and children's biomarkers of exposure. The research is informed by conceptual foundations from Dixon's Integrative Environmental Health Framework and the World Health Organization's Multiple Exposure-Multiple Effects (MEME) model. Because of variability in children's risks, it was important to develop a tailored intervention that mirrored each family's educational needs and exposure context. Development of the intervention included: 1) a literature review addressing environmental risk communication and agent-specific recommendations, 2) the collection of pilot data (n=31 families) addressing both risks and perceptions (e.g., thoughts and feelings), and 3) the collection of focus group data addressing parents' impressions of prototype intervention materials. These activities lead to the development of the final intervention, which included 10 standard and 5 tailored modules. Standard modules addressed prevention actions appropriate for all families and included topics such as, “A Healthy Home,” and “Taking Stock of Your Household.” Tailored modules addressed both risk magnitude (e.g., airborne radon or 4 pCi/L) and informational needs (e.g., “carbon monoxide can build up in homes that have wood stoves”). Rural low-income families comprise an underrepresented and understudied population in regard to environmental risks, despite evidence that many Superfund sites and other contaminated sites are located in small towns. Translational nursing research can fill an important gap in the applied sciences by examining families' perceptions and response to such risks.