Examining Childrens Environmental Health Science and Science-Based Regulatory Policy

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This award supports a study of the development and practice of Children’s Environmental Health Science (CEHS) and of regulatory policy based in CEHS. Prior to 1995, children were largely ignored in environmental regulatory decisions despite growing evidence that their developing bodies were more vulnerable to environmental health threats. Over the past twenty-five years, CEHS has expanded through federal support for a network of CEHS centers, which furthered scientific research on children’s vulnerability to environmental health threats. The idea of orienting regulatory protections toward the most vulnerable has gained currency, and it has been codified to some extent in law and policy. However, there has been little analysis of how and to what extent CEHS has influenced regulatory policy and how CEHS’s interdisciplinarity and focus on community based participatory research has influenced the development of the field and environmental policy. The results of this study will be published in high-impact peer reviewed journals, and they will be disseminated to scientific, advocacy and governmental groups via presentations and white papers at professional organizations and conferences; they will also be used for curriculum development. In addition, the project will train and mentor up to six undergraduate students, three of whom attend a minority-serving institution. The research team will conduct interviews with scientists, regulators, and advocates. The team will also engage in archival research and participant observation to establish a history of CEHS, and to explore how scientists, lay people, and advocates contributed to its development and evolution. The team also plans to examine the impacts of CEHS on federal environmental regulations, and it will examine the role CEHS centers played in the evolution of CEH and the translation of CEHS into policy. The results of this project will contribute to ongoing conversations in Science and Technologies Studies regarding the interactions between science, regulations, and advocacy. They will contribute to the peer reviewed literature on the role of vulnerability, equity, and justice in the development of scientific fields and how these concepts are translated into policy. This project will also engage with scientists, regulators and advocates to share lessons learned and to make recommendations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.