School of Public Health and Community Medicine - University of Washington - Autumn 2007

PEHSU Wins National Award

PEHSU: Sheela Sathyanarayana MD, MPH., Catherine Karr MD, PhD, Nancy J. Beaudet, MS, CIH. EPA: Carolyn Hubbard. Photo by Carolyn Hubbard.

The Northwest Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) received the Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Environmental Health Excellence Award for its leadership in protecting children from environmental health risks.

The Children’s Environmental Health Excellence Award aims to increase awareness and stimulate activity by recognizing efforts that protect children from environmental health risks at the local, regional, national, and inter-national level. The University of Washington center is one of ten winners of this national award.

Northwest PEHSU, a Pediatrics and Occupational and Environmental Medicine grant program, provides expert consultation to health care and public health professionals and to parents on environmental agents of concern, such as lead, mercury, and pesticides. It also offers a wide variety of training opportunities to increase the regional capacity of health professionals to address these concerns.

"PEHSU is uniquely poised to provide state of the art evidence and information that improves clinical practice, public health research, and policy that addresses environmental health threats to children in the Pacific Northwest," says Adjunct Assistant Professor Catherine Karr, who directs the interdisciplinary UW-based program.

"Our success as a regional resource and member of a national network has yielded interest from many other countries and we are thrilled with the likely development of a global pediatric environmental health network."

For Further Reading

• http://depts.washington.edu/pehsu
• http://yosemite.epa.gov/ochp/ochpweb.nsf/content/chm07.htm

HISTORY: CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

Fundraising for Children's Orthopedic Hospital, 1912. UW Libraries Special Collections.

A century ago, 23 prominent Seattle women donated $20 each to launch a children's hospital that would provide health care at no cost.

In 1908, the Children's Orthopedic Hospital Association opened Fresh Air House on top of Queen Anne Hill at 114 Crockett Street. Despite its laudable mission, it was met with opposition by neighbors who were concerned about contagion. Organizers met with neighbors and, in 1911, a proper three-story, 40-bed brick building was completed next to the house.

In 1953, Children's Orthopedic moved to Sand Point Way and, in 1997, was renamed Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center.

In 1974, the hospital formalized its connection with research facilities at the UW Medical Center, and has since become the primary teaching and research facility for UW pediatric medicine.

It serves the single largest geographic region of any children's hospital in the US: Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and consistently ranks as one of the best children's hospitals in the country.

-Collen Marquist

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