Alaska Children's Environmental Health Summit: Protecting Children at the Top of the World

Alaska Community Action On Toxics (Acat), Anchorage AK

Investigators

Abstract

R13 Project Summary The first Alaska Children?s Environmental Health Summit: Protecting Children at the Top of the World will convene in Anchorage, Alaska, on October 5-6, 2016 at Alaska Pacific University. Health care professionals, Native traditional healers and elders, researchers, and nationally recognized experts will gather to address primary public and environmental health concerns that disproportionately affect Alaska?s children. Exposures to toxic chemicals in the environment, especially persistent organic pollutants, are linked in animal and human studies with adverse reproductive and developmental effects that may harm future generations. Arctic Indigenous peoples have some of the highest exposure to persistent chemicals of any population on earth, and studies show that children are typically more highly exposed than adults. The conference will bring together experts on developmental and health effects of these chemicals on children in order to inform public health interventions, policies, and to improve health outcomes for current and future generations of children in vulnerable Arctic indigenous populations. The meeting will be live-streamed through the internet to communities throughout Alaska. In addition to the meeting, public educational events will be convened in the evening. Findings will also be made available in a report on the State of Children?s Environmental Health in Alaska.