EHCC is the only national program working for over 14 years to deliver technical assistance, training, and resources to child care professionals on reducing environmental hazards within child care settings. The EHCC program’s goal is to identify common toxicants found within and around child care facilities (Head Start, Early Head Start, family child care, and center-based facilities) and reduce or all together prevent adverse health effects from exposures.
Creating safer and healthier child care settings–free of harmful environmental hazards–is key to protecting the safety and well-being of our nation’s children. Young children are the most vulnerable to toxic exposures.
Eco-Healthy Child Care® runs an endorsement program for child care facilities. We endorse facilities (center and family child care) that comply with 30 out of 35 simple, free or low-cost environmentally healthy best practices found on our checklist. These eco-healthy changes immediately benefit the well-being of young children and staff and create toxic-free early learning settings.
By partnering with our nation’s caretakers and providing them with realistic and cost-effective strategies to eliminate environmental hazards, we are working to create safer, healthier, and greener early learning settings.
EHCC has embedded environmental health-related best practices & policies into national child care systems including accreditation and health and safety standards, and state Quality Rating Improvement Systems (MD, PA, and UT) and licensing (MN).
In 2016, EHCC collaborated with the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a national accreditation body for center-based child care professionals that has over 80,000 members, to update their Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria to include more comprehensive best practices in environmental health. In 2020, the Association for Early Learning Leaders (AELL), a similar accreditation body, also focused on center-based child care facilities, adopted many of EHCC’s best practices.
Child care systems always seek strategies to incentivize best practices and improve quality. One strategy is the development of Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS). A QRIS is offered in each state. They provide a non-regulatory framework for building high-quality early care and education programs. EHCC has successfully aligned eco-healthy best practices found on the checklist with a growing number of state QRIS programs.
Working with these state QRIS systems is an impactful strategy for raising awareness about environmental health AND reducing environmental hazards in child care facilities.
Maryland incorporated the EHCC program into their state QRIS, Maryland EXCELS, by offering an “Eco-Friendly” badge for licensed child care facilities. (The EHCC endorsement is one of four environmental-health/nature-related certifications recognized by Maryland.)
Utah’s Child Care QRIS offers child care facilities two points for becoming EHCC-endorsed.
Pennsylvania’s QRIS Keystone Stars has a bonus point system and acknowledges providers’ work towards improving the environmental health of their facilities using EHCC’s e-learning course and checklist items. Becoming EHCC-endorsed is optional for child care providers.
The National Center for Health and Safety in Child Care and Early Education’s Caring for Our Children’s (CFOC) is a nationally respected resource providing comprehensive agreed upon health and safety best practice standards for the child care community. In 2014 EHCC developed an environmental health collection for CFOC. EHCC has also created safe siting, lead prevention, safer cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting, and reducing exposure to harmful chemicals in plastics standards for CFOC.
EHCC’s work to incorporate environmental health best practices within national child care accreditation and health and safety standards is a path towards strengthening child care licensing, which is offered at the state level, and sometimes at the city or county level. When state licensing agencies are seeking to update regulations they often look to these aforementioned systems for model practices that have been agreed upon by subject matter experts.
EHCC’s long-term partner and National Advisory Committee member, the National Association for Regulatory Administration, brought EHCC on as an environmental health subject matter expert to update Minnesota’s child care licensing regulations in 2022. EHCC reviewed environmental health licensing regulations from other states (e.g., Colorado and Washington) and national accreditation (e.g. NAEYC and AELL) and health and safety standards (e.g., CFOC) to assist in the development of best practices language for Minnesota. EHCC then drafted and submitted to Minnesota environmental health best practices language for the following topics: Pesticides, Indoor Air Quality, Ventilation, Cleaning/Sanitizing/Disinfecting, Lead, Art Supplies, Plastics, Safe Siting, Mercury, and Radon. Minnesota is currently reviewing the draft environmental health language.
Protecting childrens’ environmental health is a tenet of health and safety. CEHN’s Eco-Healthy Child Care® program works strategically to create solutions for long-term change.
Our EHCC program team has learned that it is first essential to empower the early care and learning field through professional development. As such, our EHCC e-learning course, offered in both English and Spanish, is used to provide child care educators with information on defining environmental health, understanding children’s unique vulnerabilities, describing routes of chemical exposures, and comprehending children are not just little adults.
Several state department’s of health and human services have used their Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Choose Safe Places for Early Care and Education funding to bulk purchase EHCC’s Protecting Children’s Environmental Health e-course. New Hampshire and Tennessee bought usages, 400 and 200 respectively, of the e-course for child care providers, and New York is offering it to their child care licensors. These strategies increase environmental health-related professional development opportunities for the child care field, as the e-course is approved for learning clock hours/ continuing education in all states except for Montana. Montana does not recognize e-learning courses for adult learning clock hours for child care professionals.
By embedding environmental health best practices into recognized early care and learning systems and structures, child care professionals become more familiar and comfortable with preferable practices for reducing exposures to lead, mercury, unsafe plastics, treated playground equipment and more. Quality Rating Improvement Systems (QRIS) provide a systemic approach to assess, improve, and communicate the level of quality in early and school-age care and education programs. These programs are non-mandated, but aim to elevate the quality of care. The following states recognize the EHCC endorsement as part of their QRIS, so as to uplift the importance of environmental health protective practices: Maryland, Pennsylvania and Utah.
In every state, licensed child care professionals, both center-based and family child care, must comply with their child care licensing regulations. These regulations are mandated in order for a child care provider to be licensed by the state. EHCC is working toward the ‘gold star’ approach to change. If environmental health best practices are integrated into required licensing standards, then children within licensed care facilities will be protected from chemical exposures, such as unsafe disinfectant solutions, and heavy metals, such as lead. This is the best solution for protecting as many children as possible, especially those that are most marginalized. From 2022 through 2024, the EHCC team supported the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) Licensing Division in updating their state licensing regulations to include environmental health protections. This allowed EHCC’s creation of a blueprint for how environmental best practices can effectively and realistically be included into licensing requirements. The EHCC team is eager to support other states in following suit!
The Children’s Environmental Health Network is not liable for any health and safety violation that may be witnessed at an Eco-Healthy Child Care® facility. This program encourages best practices and policies. It is the responsibility of each facility to follow the mandated child care licensing regulations within their respective state.
