Effectiveness of a household environmental health intervention delivered by rural public health nurses

Abstract

Objectives: Parents need meaningful and actionable information if they are to reduce household environmental health risks to their children. To address this issue, we tested the effectiveness of a multi-risk social/cognitive intervention on rural lowincome parents' (1) environmental health self-efficacy and (2) stage of environmental health precautionary adoption. Methods: Biomarker (lead, cotinine) and household samples (carbon monoxide, radon, mold/mildew, and drinking water contaminants) were collected from 235 families (399 adults, 441 children) in Montana and Washington states. Families were randomly assigned to intervention or control groups; intervention families received 4 visits from public health nurses who provided tailored information and guidancetoparents; controls received usual and customary public health services. Results: At 3 months, the intervention group had significantly higher scores on (1) all 6 risk-specific self-efficacy subscales (P