Public health stops at the school house door

Abstract

In the United States, all children of appropriate age are required to attend school, and many parents send their children to child care. Many school and day care buildings have been found to have environmental health problems that impact children’s health and diminish their ability to learn. No federal agency has the capacity or authority to identify, track, or remediate these problems. A recent meeting, coordinated by Healthy Schools Network, Inc., has developed a set of recommendations to begin to deal with the issue of environmental health problems in schools.