The Canadian Partnership for Children's Health and Environment has several initiatives that build the capacity of the members to work more effectively on specific children's environmental health issues.

The following are some of the ways that CPCHE supports its members and serves the greater goals of facilitating change for the protection of children.

Secretariat
The CPCHE Secretariat supports and facilitates the work of the partnership through the Partnership Director. It is the role of the Partnership Director to; facilitate and support collaborative work amongst CPCHE partners; provide guidance and limited support to individual CPCHE projects and constellations; take a lead role in planning and sustainability for CPCHE; and provide support to the CCEHP coordinating committee.

Erica Phipps is the Partnership Director and can be reached at erica@healthyenvironmentforkids.ca .

Healthy Environment for Kids Web Site
The www.healthyenvironmentforkids.ca web site portal will be launched in the autumn of 2003. It will improve access to information about children's environmental health by providing a doorway to children's environmental health issues in Canada. The web portal will be an information hub for researchers, policy-makers, environmentalists, health professionals, child care professionals, caregivers and the public. It will be a key foundation for the launch of a children's environmental health literacy campaign.

Children's Environmental Health Literacy
CPCHE's Health Promotion & Communications Activities are composed of several different initiatives that feed into and support one another. Although in the early stages, CPCHE's work will be focused on working with decision-makers and service providers such as child care and health care professionals to raise awareness of the issues through a health promotion strategy, and; working to raise awareness with caregivers and parents through the development of a communications strategy that lays the foundation for a national social marketing campaign.

CPCHE is involved in the development of several specific tools and processes on which a comprehensive literacy campaign is being built. Some of these include:

  • The Children's Environmental Health Primer that will provide an overview of children's environmental health issues. This peer-reviewed and publicly accessible primer will establish the current state of children's environmental health in Canada and will be CPCHE's ‘flagship' publication on which all other communications materials and strategies will be built.
  • www.healthyenvironmentforkids.ca web portal will provide basic information about the issues as well as in-depth materials that explain and substantiate the issues. The web portal will have information for parents/families as well as health professionals, child care practitioners, health promoters, researchers – in fact any- and everyone who is interested in information about children's health and environment.
  • Community-Led Service Provider Campaign . CPCHE recognizes that improving children's environmental health literacy amongst child care providers, doctors, nurses, librarians, public health officials and many other service providers is an essential first step to creating a supportive environment for change in the lives of children and parents. Working closely with our partners and networks, CPCHE is working to provide a community-based social marketing campaign through service providers to the public.
  • Children's Environmental Health Workshop Series . Building on the need to engage service providers and professionals, CPCHE is working with partners to provide workshops on children's environmental health to service providers in communities and at conferences across Ontario.