Institute for Children's Environmental Health

Mission and Values

Mission

The Institute for Children's Environmental Health (ICEH), founded in 1999, is a nonprofit educational organization working to ensure a healthy, just and sustainable future for all children. ICEH's primary mission is to foster collaborative initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate environmental exposures that can undermine the health of current and future generations.

To support this mission, ICEH is committed to:

• Creating long-term partnerships with a broad range of organizations and institutions to help build a more effective and collaborative environmental health movement;
• Translating emerging environmental health science for lay audiences and policymakers;
• Working with health-affected constituencies, in particular learning and developmental disabilities organizations, to educate their members about possible environmental links to various health problems and to nurture their capacity to advocate for policies that protect children from neurotoxicants; and
• Supporting policies and actions that are based on preventive, transparent, democratic and precautionary practices to ensure children's unique susceptibilities to environmental exposures are being addressed.

Values Statement

We believe all children deserve a healthy, just and sustainable future. Escalating rates of chronic disease and disabilities – such as asthma, childhood cancers and learning problems – prevent children from reaching their fullest potential. Because environmental pollution contributes to these illnesses, it is our responsibility to minimize children's exposures. We do this by upholding the basic precept ‘better safe than sorry,' and by promoting the development of safer products and manufacturing methods.

When we as a society had the political will to eliminate DDT and then lead from gasoline and paint, we found alternatives and created healthier, more economically vibrant communities. We now need to take even bolder steps to protect our children's health today and for generations to come. ICEH, a nationally recognized leader in the environmental health field, is fully investing our time and resources to do just that.

ICEH currently has two major national programs:

• The Learning and Developmental Disability Initiative (LDDI), a national network of almost 200 organizations and individuals interested in collaborating on research, educational and policy initiatives that reduce exposures to pollutants that may undermine healthy brain development. LDDI is a working group of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) and members include researchers, health professionals, learning and developmental disabilities organizations and environmental health and justice groups; and
• The Partnership for Children's Health and the Environment, a growing coalition of over 270 organizations and leaders in government, academic and community-based sectors in North America, committed to sharing information and incubating new collaborative initiatives on children's environmental health issues.

In addition, ICEH regionally coordinates:

• The Collaborative on Health and the Environment – Washington (CHE-WA), a regional project of national CHE. CHE-WA is a network of over 310 researchers, health-affected groups, health care practitioners, environmental health and justice advocates, and other concerned citizens committed to reducing environmental contaminants for a healthier future. Currently, CHE-WA has three major working groups: 1) Precautionary Principle; 2) Research and Information; and 3) Environmental Justice.

ICEH is a project of the Tides Center.

Institute for Children's Environmental Health
PO Box 991
Freeland, WA 98249
360-331-7904