The annual Children’s Environmental Health Symposium took place on April 26, 2017 at the CalEPA Headquarters Building in Sacramento. The theme of this year’s symposium was: “Environmental Justice and Children.”

Videos from the symposium are now available.

The symposium was headlined by Dr. Gail Christopher, a nationally-recognized leader in health policy, social determinants of health, health inequities and public policy issues of concern to our nation’s future. As the senior advisor and vice president at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Christopher leads the foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) enterprise. During her talk, Dr. Christopher provided an illuminating perspective on addressing and mitigating the effects of social dislocation and inequities. She advocated for the need of an explicit inclusion of racism as a social determinant of health.

In addition to Dr. Christopher, there was a full program of environmental-justice experts who delivered fantastic presentations.  Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch (UC Berkeley) spoke about connections between equity and sustainability in her talk “The Haves, The Have-nots, and the Health of Everyone.”  Professor Brian Trainor (UC Davis) described the “Neuroendocrine Basis of Stress.”  Professor Camelia Hostinar (UC Davis) explained the relationships between “Allostatic Load, Early Development and Lifelong Impacts.” Professor Brenda Eskenazi (UC Berkeley) showed that “Income and Social Stressors Modify Impacts of Pesticides in Children.”  Professor Lia Fernald (UC Berkeley) discussed what effects interventions can have in the context of “SES, Family Processes and Child Development.”  Dean Rosalind Wright (Mount Sinai) described how early-life social and environmental influences can impact lifelong health in her presentation “Risk and Resilience”.  Ms. Laura August (OEHHA) used the CalEnviroScreen tool to go “Mining for Data on Children, Poverty, and Other Social and Environmental Factors”.

The symposium was co-hosted by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units at University of California San Francisco, and the University of California Berkeley Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Leukemia and the Environment.