Field Placement: Community Action Partnership of Orange County (CAPOC)
Location: Garden Grove CA
Preceptor: Alan Woo
Student Name: Pooneh Navab
Year: 2004

Healthy Homes, Healthy Children: Lead Elimination Action Partnership (LEAP)

The Lead Elimination Action Partnership (LEAP) is a project of the non-profit Community Action Partnership of Orange County (CAPOC) funded by the Healthy Homes, Healthy Children initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). LEAP is a collaborative partnership of non-profit organizations, foundations, and governmental agencies working together to substantially reduce the incidence of childhood lead poisoning in Orange County’s highest risk neighborhoods. LEAP employs a multifaceted approach to combating lead poisoning that includes increasing visibility, ensuring the effectiveness of related policies and regulations through advocacy and coalition building, and training community groups to develop and sustain their own outreach programs at the grassroots level.

HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard and Control and the U.S. Census estimates that there are approximately 93,000 homes in Orange County region that were built prior to 1978; a federal law was passed in 1978 that prohibits the use of lead-based paint in residential structures in the U.S. Old and deteriorated buildings are hence the most dangerous and hazardous home environments for children under the age of 6 years. Most of the vulnerable children population exposed to lead hazards come primarily from low-income and immigrant families in Orange County. Reducing the risk of lead exposure and poisoning via education and lead abatement activities is the primary mission of LEAP.

As a public health intern, I worked on the educational aspect of increasing lead hazard awareness in the community. My job consisted of working with the Director, Project Manager, and others in the Planning and Program Development Department of CAPOC. I developed a logic model for a mass media campaign that targeted low-income clinics, community centers, public libraries, and WIC locations. I conducted educational outreach work by talking to the Directors at the particular locations about the LEAP program and distributing pamphlets and posters. I would also use this opportunity to organize community workshops on lead hazards. The workshops were targeted to the whole Orange County community but in particular to low-income families with a child between the ages of 0-6. Since pregnant mothers and their fetus are also at risk for lead exposure, they were also targeted throughout the LEAP intervention effort.

During the educational workshops, I had the opportunity to test the awareness and knowledge levels of the participants. A pre-and post-test was developed to assess the knowledge of the participants in the LEAP program before and after the lead hazard presentation. A simple panel design with a paired matched Chi square test was used to measure the impact of the LEAP educational component.

The last part of the internship consisted of organizing a lead awareness outreach effort called the Xtreme Halloween Community Fair. The event took place on October 30, 2004 at the Valencia Community Center in Fullerton. This particular location was selected due to the high poverty statistics and lack of utilization of public and social resources/services. I was assigned to organizing the community fair by recruiting non-profit, profit, governmental, and community organizations for the event. The purpose of the event was to introduce the low-income families in the Fullerton regions of Orange County to resources such as LEAP, Orange County Health Care Agency, American Cancer Society, and several other health related organization. The job also called for fund-raising activity and leveraging of resources for the LEAP program.

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