Building a National Model for Environmental Health Literacy and Clinical Integration

Drawing on the development of 23 health-literate “Prescriptions for Prevention” resources through the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (PEHSU) network, the session traces the pathway from community-facing education to clinical integration. The regional building blocks have informed the national effort to embed these resources into electronic medical record systems to support provider assessment, coding, ordering, and patient education delivery at point of care. Attendees will examine evidence on health literacy’s role in prevention efficacy, explore the practical and technical challenges of EMR interventions, and consider how this scalable model could be adapted across health systems, specialties, and federal programs to improve both provider workflow and patient uptake.

Learning objectives:

1. Describe the environmental health literacy gap affecting caregivers and providers, and its impact on pediatric environmental exposure prevention and health outcomes. 
2. Evaluate the evidence for health-literate patient education as an effective mechanism for environmental health prevention in community and clinical settings.
3. Analyze the process and challenges of translating health education resources into clinical decision support tools.
4. Apply lessons from this national model to identify opportunities for scaling environmental health literacy interventions at other institutions, in research agendas, or within federal programs.