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Two Grants Promoting Healthy Communities Awarded In New Hampshire

Release Date: 10/27/2004
Contact Information:

Contact: Peyton Fleming, EPA Press Office (617-918-1008)

For Immediate Release: October 27, 2004; Release #04-10-34

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Two projects in New Hampshire have been awarded EPA healthy community grants totaling nearly $60,000 in order to build on ongoing environmental and public health initiatives. The two grants, announced today in Manchester, NH, were among 23 selected in New England. The programs receiving funding all aim to support a goal of creating healthy, livable and safe communities.

A grant of $29,802 was awarded to the City of Manchester Health Department, and a grant of $30,000 was awarded to the Healthy First Family Care Center of Franklin, NH.

“From reducing lead poisoning to preventing asthma attacks, these groups are doing a great job of creating healthy, liveable and safe communities in New Hampshire,” said Robert W. Varney, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office, who announced the grant at the Manchester Health Department. “Today’s grants will help these groups build on their success so that more New Hampshire residents can benefit from their work.”

The grants will fund the following:

Health First Family Care Center ($30,000) – The Lead Hazard/Asthma Trigger Reduction Program will build on an existing program. This funding will allow the center to reach more at-risk children and their families. The project includes training a staff nurse as a Certified Asthma Educator; developing and implementing an asthma outreach education program; establishing asthma peer support groups for children and adults; and conducting four trainings for clinicians on lead hazards and asthma trigger reduction. Potential participants in the in-home intervention will be identified through blood lead screening. The program will serve 20 children and their families over the project period.

City of Manchester Health Department ($29,802) – Manchester’s Multi-Lingual Asthma Education and Outreach Program will target low income families to educate them on asthma, the most diagnosed health ailment for children in Manchester during the 2002-03 school year. The program will develop materials in English, Spanish, Bosnian and Arabic to accommodate a growing ethnic population. Families will be educated in an in-home setting about common asthma triggers both in home and at school, in order to increase their awareness of the problem and the need for changing behaviors and so that triggers can be identified and eliminated.

In 2003, EPA New England initiated the Healthy Communities Grant Program to join together resources from nine separate programs, in order to more strategically address environmental issues affecting public health. The grant program competitively identifies top quality community-based projects that will achieve measurable environmental and human health improvements in communities across New England.

Healthy Communities Grants are targeted to invest action in environmental justice areas of potential concern, places with high risks from toxic air pollution, service sensitive populations, and/or are urban areas. The broad areas intended to be addressed include: Assistance & Pollution Prevention: Schools Sector; Asthma; Children's Environmental Health; Community Air Toxics; Pesticides; Smart Growth; Tools for Schools; Toxics; and the Urban Environmental Program.

More information on EPA New England’s Healthy Community Grants is available at: www.epa.gov/region1/eco/uep/grants_2004hc.html.

Related Information:
Indoor Air
Asthma
Tools for Schools
UEP Community Grants Program
Water Topics-- Clean Water Act, water
quality ...