The Essentials for Healthy Homes Practitioners course brings together a diverse mix of housing and health professionals to promote practical and cost-effective methods for making homes healthier. A major strength of the course is the peer-to-peer learning that occurs between students. Through exercises, demonstrations and discussions, students better understand the roles, perceptions and challenges that their counterparts face, and they identify ways to coordinate their work to better protect residents from environmental and safety hazards in the home.
Staff of community-based organizations play a vital role in focusing other health and housing professionals on the housing problems in their community. They can serve as a bridge to set better priorities and to more effectively communicate between parties. They can also say what agency people are often unable to say.
CBO environmental health professionals will benefit from the course because it will help them:
- Better understand the connections between housing code requirements, housing design, and potential health impacts;
- Set priorities that maximize the health benefits to residents;
- More effectively convince residents and property owners to resolve problems;
- Develop networks with health and housing professionals who can help identify resources and potential solutions; and
- Gain insight into the perspectives of nurses, pest management professionals, environmental health specialists, and code inspectors to help all be more effective.