Join us for the twentieth Annual Children’s Environmental Health Awards Celebration and the tenth annual Children’s Environmental Health Day!
This evening is dedicated to honoring extraordinary leaders who are advancing science, policy, advocacy, and creativity to ensure all children can grow up in safe and healthy environments. We’ll come together to recognize inspiring champions, uplift youth voices, and strengthen connections across generations and build our children’s environmental health community.
October 9, 2025
6 -9 pm ET
Woodend Sanctuary
8940 Jones Mill Rd
Chevy Chase, Maryland
What:
This festive and high-energy event is open to all members of the children’s environmental health community.
Join us for:
Networking, cocktails, and a buffet dinner featuring seasonal fare
Inspiring award presentations and remarks
Collaborative and interactive artwork reflecting on the past decades of the children’s environmental health movement
Together, we’ll honor the vision, courage, and dedication of this year’s leaders — and leave re-energized to continue building a healthier, more just future for all children.
When:
This event is a part of the broader commemoration of Children’s Environmental Health Day, on October 9th. The event will begin at 6 pm and we’ll say farewells at 9 pm.
Where:
We’re delighted to host this year’s celebration at Woodend Sanctuary and Mansion in Chevy Chase, MD, a 40-acre nature sanctuary dedicated to conservation and education. With its beautiful natural setting, accessible grounds, and mission to get children out in nature, Woodend perfectly aligns with our work protecting children’s health through healthy environments.
To make the evening easier for all to attend, parking is available on site and complimentary transportation will be provided between the nearest Metro stop and the venue (more info in registration form or email hannahw@cehn.org).
We’re grateful for the support of Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Public Health Association, Consumers for Dental Choice, Earthjustice, Naturepedic, The Wilderness Society, Young Gifted and Green, and generous private donors, whose contributions have made this event possible.
Janet A. Phoenix, M.D., M.P.H, MS. is an Assistant Research Professor in the Departments of Health Policy and Management in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University in Washington, DC. She is a physician by training who has managed research, risk communication, and health prevention and promotion programs for many agencies and organizations. Dr. Phoenix is the Founder and Manager of the Healthy Homes Asthma Home Visiting Program, which has for more than 10 years has provided assistance to Medicaid families to address home environmental asthma triggers to Medicaid families. Dr. Phoenix conducts research in children’s environmental health, with an emphasis on community-based participatory methods such as health impact analysis. She consults with communities at high risk for environmental disease, providing technical assistance and advocacy. She received her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Colorado in Denver and her doctorate in medicine from Howard University. Dr. Phoenix also completed a master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a master’s degree in Translational Sciences from George Washington University. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University, Dr. Phoenix served on two federal advisory committees, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) DC Lead Poisoning Advisory Committee, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. She was appointed by Governor Terry McAuliffe to the Virginia Advisory Committee on Environmental Justice. She serves as Vice Chair of that body. She is a Cochair of the Lead Poisoning Elimination and Healthy Housing Advisory Committee for the DC Department of Energy & Environment.
Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in a Just Transition Framework, serving as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with the resources to actualize visions. Prior to the launch of the Chisholm Legacy Project, Patterson served as the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade. During her tenure, she founded and implemented a robust portfolio which included serving the state and local leadership whose constituencies consisted of hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice. She also led a team in designing and implementing a portfolio to support political education and organizing work executed by NAACP branches, chapters, and state conferences.
including Diana Van Vleet, Laura Kate Bender, Shyamala Rajan, Liz Scott, Natalia Reyes Becerra and Emily Thompson
Staff at the American Lung Association working on air pollution and climate change issues lead the Healthy Air Partners Coalition, a group of national public health, medical, nursing and health care organizations. The coalition advocates for measures to improve air quality, address climate change and protect public health at the federal level. Lung Association staff in Washington, DC and beyond work regularly to keep coalition members informed about key policy developments, draft group letters and public comments for members to join, organize coalition members to participate in meetings with decision-makers and other advocacy opportunities, and work with coalition members on their own clean air advocacy priorities. The coalition has been in existence for more than 15 years, and has a strong track record of weighing in with the expertise and credibility of the health voice in key federal clean air and climate decisions.
A creative entrepreneur, playwright, and organic farmer, Rozina Kanchwala founded Eco.Logic, an arts-based environmental organization that focuses on building connections and inspiring action. Through Eco.Logic, Rozina runs youth camps, adult programs, climate theater productions, and a land restoration project.
Rozina’s debut play, Love in the Time of Climate Change, a climate comedy, premiered at two theater festivals in Washington, DC. in 2019. Her second play, Come Along for the Ride: A Journey through Climate Grief, took the stage at theaters and festivals in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen, and Chicago in 2024 and 2025.
Rozina’s background in energy and environmental work spans multiple countries and geographies. As a Fulbright scholar, Rozina spent a year in India researching agrarian distress, and then completed her Masters in Environment and Sustainable Development at University College London, where she conducted field work in Accra, Ghana to better understand the challenges faced by urban farmers. Recently, Rozina served as the Director of the EDICT Partnership at the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI), where her work focused on increasing diversity in the green sector and promoting inclusivity in the industry.
Rozina is a Women’s Earth Alliance Accelerator award recipient, a Rachel’s Network Catalyst Finalist, and she currently serves as a board member of Climate Land Leaders.
Dr. Jalonne L. White-Newsome is a visionary leader, public servant, advocate, teacher and entrepreneur committed to transforming communities through people-centered solutions. Affectionately known as “Dr. J”, she has a proven track record of solving complex problems, crafting and operationalizing strategy, and building relationships and trust among diverse sectors, levels of leadership, and impacted communities. Her work over the past 3 decades exhibits her unwavering commitment to equity and justice across multiple sectors, including private, public, academic, not for profit, and philanthropic sectors.
Appointed in June 2022, Dr. White-Newsome is serving as the first Federal Chief Environmental Justice Officer, where she advises the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on environmental justice and leads the White House’s first Office of Environmental Justice.
Starting her career in chemical engineering, she first tackled environmental challenges and injustice in private industry, as well as through a wide range of positions and perspectives, including through the grassroots environmental justice movement, environmental philanthropy, state government, and academia.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Dr. White-Newsome founded Empowering a Green Environment and Economy, LLC, a strategic consulting firm that focused on transforming communities by using people-centered solutions to improve public health, advance racial equity, and promote environmental justice. In her time in philanthropy at The Kresge Foundation, she created the Climate Resilience and Equitable Water Systems Initiative, the first national grantmaking initiative, focused at the intersection of climate change and water inequity. Before Kresge, she served as the first Director of Federal Policy for WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
She frequently speaks across the country and has been recognized nationally for her work, advocacy and research that uplifts the impacts on the health of low-income and communities of color, due to air pollution, climate-driven extreme heat and flooding, and unprotective policy. She spends time in both Washington, DC and her home in Michigan, and is the proud wife and mother of her daughters, Arielle and Jeannelyn.
Madhvi Chittoor is a 14-year-old Eco Warrior and an SDG STEAM advocate. She is the youngest UN Child Advisor, 2024 TIME Kid of the Year Honoree, People Magazine Earth Day Featured Person, voted the Best Upcoming Peacemaker by 14 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Global Ambassador for EarthDay.org and Plastic Pollution Coalition. She has been a Climate Warrior since she was 5 years old and is also known as “No Styrofoam Ninja”, “No Plastic Ninja”, “Ms. Policy” and “Ban PFAs Beast”. She has ushered largescale impactful changes locally, nationally, and globally through advocacy, policy and education via signature campaigns, public speeches, testimonies, meetings with and emails to many heads-of-states, legislators, diplomats, Climate scientists, businesses, artists, educationists, etc. In September 2023 she addressed the UN Assembly in Geneva and in March 2023, she addressed the UN General Assembly in NY. As per UN she made history as the youngest UN Child Advisor in the formulation of UNGC 26. She founded the non-profit Madhvi4EcoEthics at age 6, the EcoEthics Global Movement at the age of 9 and EcoSTEAMNinjas at age 13 with operations in India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Spain, Portugal, Brazil,etc.
A few of her policy successes are – Spearheaded 1) Global Plastic Policy with Madam VP Harris and US Secretary of State Mr. Anthony Blinken which lead to the US joining the Global Plastics Treaty, later ratified by the UNEA in March 2022 in Lisbon, Portugal 2) with EPA Water former Head Ms. Radhika Fox and US EPA Chief Mr. Michael Reagan to issue legally enforceable reduced PFAS guidance limits in Drinking water all over USA and also globally 3) with Governors to declare March as PFAS Pollution Impact Awareness Month and April as Plastic and Styrofoam Pollution Impact Awareness Month in Colorado 4) with legislators and Governors to bring about 3 laws in 2021, 2022. 2024 – to ban plastic bags and Styrofoam containers and to ban PFAS in consumer products in Colorado 5) In 2024 with ECMC on cumulative impacts and produced water governance for oil and gas industry 6) In 2021 and 2022 with EPA on Air Quality nationally and AQCC in Colorado 7) in 2020, with COGCC/ECMC the implement her suggestions as rules in the oil-and-gas permit process for surface water, stormwater and ground water conservation for the entire oil-and-gas industry in Colorado 8) the replacement of non-biodegradable carcinogenic Styrofoam lunch trays from 155 schools with 86000 students with compostable ones and eliminating 26 million Styrofoam containers from going to landfill from 2019 till date and saving the health of students and many more 9) Has designed and organized customized Climate Action and Climate Adaptation workshops, events, presentations empowering children and youth globally.
She is also an internationally recognized music composer, plays many instruments, two Guinness World Records holder, a recognized author, a Bharatanatyam dance exponent, a Taekwondo Black Belt and an inventor. Her book “Is Plastic My Food?’ received recognition from National Geographic and the US Congress.
This celebration honors advocates for their leadership on behalf of children’s environmental health, equity, and climate action and justice. CEHN honors these incredible leaders each year at an awards ceremony in Washington DC on Children’s Environmental Health Day.
The Child Health Advocate Awards honor outstanding children’s environmental health leaders (age 22 and up) in Policy, Science, Community, Business, and Arts/Media. These child health champions have gone above and beyond to create systemic change, protecting children from environmental hazards.
The NOW Youth Leadership Award was created as part of the Children’s Environmental Health Network’s 20th-anniversary celebration in 2012, in honor of Executive Director Nsedu Obot Witherspoon. This award honors a young person who has demonstrated exceptional environmental health leadership–protecting human health, especially of our most vulnerable populations.
© Children’s Environmental Health Network, 2025
