Childhood lead poisoning prevention: A program plan for Galveston County

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2007-04-23

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Abstract

Childhood lead poisoning continues to cause permanent brain damage and other serious sequelae throughout the United States. Although the prevalence is decreasing nationwide, Galveston County lags considerably behind most sections of the country. In 2003, the United States prevalence of lead poisoning in children under 6 years old had dropped to 1.93%, while Galveston County remained at 11.5% and its largest city, Galveston, was still 17.8%. Recent loss of grant funding further challenged Galveston County Health District’s efforts to address this crisis.\r\n Nationwide evaluations of childhood lead poisoning prevention programs have identified state-of-the-art programmatic elements consistently producing positive outcomes. From this data, recommendations have been developed to guide local programs. In this capstone, these guidelines are applied to evaluate Galveston County Health District’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. A robust plan will then be provided to optimize program effectiveness and minimize this threat to the children of Galveston County.

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Keywords

venous sample, TDSHS grant, programmatic evaluation, Elevated blood lead level, capillary sample, 4Cs clinic

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