UWM Professor Joins National Group on Children’s Environmental Health

MILWAUKEE -- Laura Anderko, associate professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing, was recently selected as a member of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee. Anderko, whose research and teaching focus on community nursing and children’s environmental health, was also selected as a faculty champion by the National Environmental Education Training Foundation (NEETF).

The Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee provides advice, information and recommendations to assist EPA in developing regulations, guidance and policies to address children’s health. As an NEETF faculty champion, Anderko will focus on training health professionals to recognize environmentally related health conditions in children and to integrate environmental health content into health-professional curriculum.

“Children are the most vulnerable to developing health conditions based on environmental exposures,” says Anderko. Asthma, developmental disabilities and cancer are all on the rise among children and are being increasingly linked to environmental triggers, she adds.

Environmental health hazards for children are present in everyday settings such as homes, day care centers, playgrounds and schools, she explains. Children are particularly vulnerable to environmental exposures because they breathe, eat and drink more than adults relative to their body weight, absorb toxins more readily than adults and may be exposed to contaminants while their brains and nervous systems are still developing.

School nurses, public health nurses, occupational nurses and other community-focused health professionals can play a key role in environmental health issues, says Anderko.

“Our jobs take us to where people live, work and play. By virtue of the fact that we are where people spend a good deal of their time, we can influence behavior and health.”

Anderko was one of 20 nurses nationally selected for a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellowship last year. Through this fellowship, she is working with primary care nurses within community nursing centers on a multi-state leadership project on environmental health. The project is designed to help nurses in nursing centers nationally, and particularly in the Great Lakes area, integrate environmental health assessments and screening into their practices. Her research focuses on mercury toxicity associated with fish consumption.

Anderko has been involved in public health nursing for more than 28 years, and in academics for more than 20 years. Her career has focused on the needs of underserved communities, particularly those living in poverty. She is chair of the governing board of the Nursing Centers Research Network, a federally funded primary care, practice-based research network.

###