The PEHE Project

Integrating Prenatal Environmental Health Education into Clinical Care

Background

What’s the problem?

There is a significant and fast growing body of evidence linking prenatal exposures to common environmental toxicants such as lead, pesticides, Bisphenol A, mercury, second-hand smoke and numerous other substances in our day-to-day lives, to negative reproductive and developmental health outcomes. Prenatal healthcare providers have shown considerable success in educating prospective parents about the importance of reducing fetal exposures to some toxicants, namely tobacco smoke and alcohol. Problematically, they rarely counsel patients about other toxicants despite evidence of serious risks, patient demand for information, and the proliferation of potentially harmful advice and products from the internet and elsewhere.

Addressing the problem - The PEHE Project

Recognizing the importance of reducing exposures and the crucial role prenatal care providers can play in counselling patients, the goal of the PEHE Project is to improve our understanding of factors that promote and inhibit the uptake of equitable prenatal environmental health preventive care activities across diverse prenatal care, community, occupational and environmental contexts in Canada. Involving national surveys and focus groups with prenatal care providers and reproductive aged women, our findings will inform the creation of effective and context sensitive environmental health education strategies and clinically relevant policy, practice guidelines and resources.

The PEHE team

Our multidisciplinary team includes experts in reproductive health and clinical care, environmental health, public health, health education and health equity. A key strength of team is our partnerships with some of Canada’s most influential prenatal care, environmental health and public health organizations. Information about these organizations and the important work they do can be found here.

Funding for this project comes from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).