The focus of this proposal is the implementation and evaluation of newly developed community-based childhood lead poisoning strategies. The target population is an economically disadvantaged, under served, urban African American population in North Central Philadelphia, who are at risk because of lead in the environment. In order to achieve culturally appropriate approaches to under served populations, the selected community-based strategies have been developed with community residents in an alliance with agencies having a demonstrated grass-roots activism in this community.
The aims /objectives are: (1) to test community-developed, community-based prevention/intervention strategies that will increase knowledge regarding the environmental health risk of childhood lead poisoning, and; (2) to test community developed, community-based prevention/intervention strategies that will increase hazard, exposure and outcome surveillance for lead as an environmental agent. Pre-/Post-intervention surveys and comparison of hazard, exposure and outcome surveillance using a control population and an experimental population of matched census tracts will provide the data for the evaluation of the community-based strategies.