About CHE-Penn

The Collaborative on Health and the Environment in Pennsylvania (CHE-Penn) is a network for environmental health education and advocacy in Pennsylvania established in 2004. This website of CHE-Penn, comprised of CHE Partners from Pennsylvania, reflects the emphasis and focus of the regional group, CHE-Penn. The interpretation of scientific information unique to the regional sites is under regional control and does not necessarily reflect CHE national's views. Only information on http://www.healthandenvironment.org, the CHE national science site, has been peer-reviewed and endorsed by CHE national. To learn more about CHE national please visit http://www.healthandenvironment.org.

The work of CHE-Penn is to produce high quality educational materials and programs, to link regional and national health and environmental groups, to engage the health care sector in environmental health issues, and to collaborate with local academic institutions on community-based research.

As Michael Lerner, founding partner of CHE, said at the founding conference of CHE-Penn, "We want to raise the level of dialogue on impact of environment on health, focused on the science, and practice civility. CHE brings together a wide range of groups. Our commitment to mutual respect is important. We want to be in community with the other organizations around the country."

History

When, in the spring of 2004, the Learning Disabilities Association of America (LDA) Executive Director, Jane Browning, approached The Heinz Endowments about supporting a CHE conference in Pittsburgh, the proposal fell on receptive ears. Program officer Dr. Ellen Dorsey had just completed planning an environmental health initiative for The Endowments and this new initiative was already seeding a number of local organizations, including Dr. Robbie Ali's Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and Steffi Domike's position as coordinator of CHE-Penn.

More generally, the environmental community was beginning to emphasize improving human health in their project goals. The activities at LDA's Healthy Children Project and the Environment Program at Heinz were echoed elsewhere. For instance, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute established the Center for Environmental Oncology in 2004 and hired Dr. Devra Davis as founding director.

The creation of the planning committee brought these different initiatives together with other community partners, and chose Kathy Lawson, coordinator of LDA's Healthy Children Project, and Steffi Domike to work together to organize the Pittsburgh 2005: Health and the Environment Conference, the founding conference of CHE-Penn.