Welcome to the Center!
| CHEC exists to help individual and communities identify the most important environmental problems facing them; empowering and energizing them with tools to prioritize and develop their own action plans towards more sustainable solutions to a healthy environment. |
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CHEC was founded in 2004 under a grant from the Heinz Endowments at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences and is now housed in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. Our mission is to advance an aggressive community-based participatory environmental health agenda including:
- Research that is:
- * Exploratory
* Applied
* Translational
- * Exploratory
- Outreach
- Policy Development
- Program Development to improve environmental public health in Southwestern PA
The aims of CHEC are to explore the relationship between ecosystem and human health, build collaborative partners and alliances, create synergy among various communities of interest, be a resource center for data, educational materials and general information on environmental conservation as well as healthy and sustainable living. Read more...
Heinz Endowments funds CHEC at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 2, 2008 – To expand environmental public health efforts at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public, the Heinz Endowments has awarded $200,000 to the school’s Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC). The grant will help support one of CHEC’s flagship programs, the Allegheny River Stewardship Project – a community-based environmental health project exploring water contamination in the Allegheny River.
Founded with initial funding by the Heinz Endowments in 2004, the purpose of CHEC is to conduct research on the relationship between the ecosystem and human health and to serve as a resource for data, educational materials and general information on conservation and healthy and sustainable living. The renewed funding will allow CHEC to expand the geographical scope of the Allegheny River Stewardship Project into other areas across Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and to develop maps of water pollution concentrations to better understand health risks from environmental contamination.
“One of the things we strive to do within the center is to help individuals and communities identify the most important environmental problems they face and empower them to develop their own action plans for healthy living,” said Conrad D. Volz, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., director of CHEC and assistant professor, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. “We are extremely grateful to the Heinz Endowments for their continued and sustaining support of this mission.”
According to Dr. Volz, CHEC employs a community-based participatory research model based on an equal partnership between traditionally trained experts and members of the community. “We believe that it is vital to involve community members in research projects so that they have a stake in the health and well-being of their own communities,” said Dr. Volz.
In addition to the Allegheny River Stewardship Project, other CHEC initiatives include identifying environmental risk factors for high pre-term delivery, low birth-weight rates and high asthma rates in the Braddock-Rankin area of Pittsburgh, working with Pittsburgh Public Schools to improve health and nutrition of students and conducting training with physicians on environmental health issues.
CHEC faculty members include Robbie Ali, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, Ravi Sharma, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, and Charles Christian, M.Ed., CHEC manager. For more information on the CHEC, visit www.chec.pitt.edu.
The Heinz Endowment supports efforts to make southwestern Pennsylvania a premier place to live and work, a center of learning and educational excellence, and a home to diversity and inclusion. Committed to helping its region to thrive as a whole community- economically, ecologically, educationally and culturally-the foundation works within Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the nation to develop solutions to challenges that are national and even international in scope. One of the largest and most innovative independent philanthropic foundations in the country, the Endowments awarded more than $84 million in grants in 2007.
Allegheny River Stewardship Project
The Allegheny River Stewardship Project is an effort by leading researchers, working together with concerned citizens of the Alle-Kiski Valley river communities, to determine the sources and types of river pollutants by monitoring the levels of toxins in fish living in the river.
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