CHE logo and link to CHE-WA home page

Washington StateThe Collaborative on Health and the Environment – Washington

A Partnership Network for Environmental Health
Established and Coordinated by the Institute for Children's Environmental Health
physician and child Seattle Space Needle and monorail smokestacks a child with her grandmother child on a playground girl at a drinking fountain orca Mt. Rainier over Tacoma

CHE-WA Working Groups

CHE-WA hosts working groups composed of CHE-WA members interested in working together on a specific topic of common interest. Currently, CHE-WA's active working group is the Children's Environmental Health Working Group, which organized the 2009 Northwest Children's Environmental Health Forum. This working group is focused on highlighting the science and research pertaining to how the developing child is affected by environmental toxicants.

Past CHE-WA working groups have included the following, with these types of projects and outcomes:

  • Climate Change and Health Working Group, which published a fact sheet focused on the health impacts of climate change with the intention of developing specific actions to protect public health, particularly the health of children.
  • Environmental Justice Working Group which worked to develop opportunities to create stronger alliances between environmental justice and environmental health advocates and to instill a broader understanding that environmental health and justice are inherently linked.
  • Precautionary Principle Working Group, which successfully pressed to have precautionary language incorporate into the comprehensives plan for the City of Seattle. This group is now strategizing to introduce similar language in other localities in Washington State and possibly on the state level
  • Research and Information Working Group which released a seminal report in January 2005 – an analysis of the data on environmental contributors to chronic health problems and some environmentally attributable health care costs in Washington State, is continuing to collect more data on these links and economic costs

CHE-WA also supports the emergence of other working groups that promote activities for the benefit all organizational efforts whether in research, education and/or advocacy. For more information, please contact Steve Gilbert.