Greetings!
Since our goal is to help make challenged urban places more self-reliant and healthy, we always ask, “What’s getting in the way?” After years of research and testing, we found one surprising answer: our homes. They are making us sick.
The presence of lead in homes is poisoning thousands of kids. Other home hazards trigger asthma and have driven nearly epidemic levels of asthma in the city. As science becomes more aware of the real costs and impacts of these hazards, we have worked to find low-cost ways to identify and clean up homes.
One important effort is training local residents, contractors, visiting nurses, and others that enter homes on a regular basis through Isles’ Healthy Homes course. They can help identify the hazards and give tools to the residents of the homes to protect themselves. This summer, we’re expanding our Healthy Homes impact by collaborating with Mercer Street Friends, a nonprofit that runs a Visiting Nurses program, to train a cadre of home assessors to go out into the community and help mitigate these threats.
As always, we’re grateful to our community partners and all those that help us keep our eyes on the prize and act with thoughtful urgency.
In Community,
Marty