Leadsafe DC

A Program of the National Nursing Centers Consortium
2100 M St. NW Suite 203
Washington, DC 20037

About Leadsafe DC

Who We Are

What We Do

How We Began

Who We Are

Lead Safe D.C. is a non-profit program that combines a broad family education initiative and a grassroots public policy task force with the goal of ridding the nation’s capital of childhood lead poisoning.

The program, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, is in its second year and has reached over 1,000 mothers in high-risk neighborhoods with lead poisoning prevention education.

The program partners with local health centers and maternity wards to provide educational home visits and community center classes on lead. Lead Safe D.C. also has established the Lead Elimination Task Force, which consists of academics, federal and local officials, nurses and doctors who meet monthly to create strategies, form partnerships and leverage resources to attack the problem of lead poisoning.

Lead Safe D.C. is a program of the National Nursing Centers Consortium (NNCC). NNCC, a nationwide nonprofit organization, operates a wide variety of health programs for medically underserved populations and has a long history of conducting outreach and primary care prevention related to lead poisoning. The NNCC represents nurse-managed healthcare centers across the United States and supports health programs that seek to provide quality care to the underserved.

What We Do

Three Components of Lead Safe D.C:

Provide home visits for mothers, expectant mothers and primary care providers aimed at helping parents ensure their home is environmentally safe.

Lead Safe D.C. conducts community workshops on lead poisoning and coordinates free blood testing for children in partnerships with the D.C. Department of Health.

Coordinates the D.C. Lead Elimination Task Force. The task force is an interagency organization includes D.C. Department of Health, D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, Alliance for Healthy Homes, Clean Water Action, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Mid-Atlantic Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, Children’s National Medical Center, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and many other community and government organizations.

How We Began

NNCC has a long legacy of community education initiatives and primary prevention programs related to lead poisoning and other health issues. In 2000, Temple Health Connection, a founding member of the National Nursing Center Consortium, tested the impact of community-developed, community-based prevention/intervention strategies upon citizen knowledge and on hazard, exposure and outcome surveillance of lead poisoning. This 3 year project, targeting neighborhood groups through block captains, increased knowledge, increased the number of children having blood lead level testing and decreased blood lead levels in experimental census tracks over control census tracks. Building on this project, the National Nursing Centers Consortium introduced Lead Safe Babies in North Philadelphia, and then to other areas of the City with high levels of lead poisoning, followed by implementation in other nursing centers around the country.

Lead Safe Babies used community outreach staff from within neighborhoods to educate caregivers regarding lead poisoning prevention using the curriculum designed in Lead Awareness: North Philly Style. All iterations of Lead Safe Babies, evaluated to date, demonstrate 1) with 95% confidence a statistically significant increase in knowledge as to how to prevent lead poisoning, 2) increases in number of children receiving blood lead level tests and lower blood lead levels than children living within the same geographic areas with similar lead exposure.