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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
Enhancement Grants - Special Projects |
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Project Title:
Protecting Children's Environmental Health: Verification, Continued Adoption, Sharing Resources and Extension to Public |
Project Directors (PDs):
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Lead State: FL Lead Organization: University of Florida |
| Undesignated Funding: $25,000 |
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Start Date: May-01-2007 End Date: Apr-30-2008 |
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Area of Emphasis: children's health |
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Summary:
Since 2004, our School IPM program has worked with county faculty to deliver IPM information with the end result of reaching the general public. Our IPM Capstone grant proposal falls within the Residential and Recreational Areas IPM focus area in the National Roadmap for Integrated Pest Management (http:// www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/pest/pdfs/ipm_roadmap_5-3-04.pdf) and the Strategic Pest Management Plan (PMSP) for School IPM, which is currently being finalized. The project director for this proposal is participating in the development of the PMSP for School IPM. In a meeting hosted by the USDA-CREES, EPA and the IPM Institute in October 2006, several priority items emerged from that meeting, including having IPM in all schools across the U.S. by 2015. Our mission has been to protect the health of children, teachers and others in the schools of Florida and other states by implementing sustainable, science-based pest management practices that minimize pests and pesticide use in cooperation with school personnel, pest managers, health officials and county agents.
Our approach is very hands-on and training is time intensive. In order to meet the goals of the strategic plans, we propose to 1) maintain and expand the implementation of IPM in schools with county agents who will extend urban IPM to the general public; 2) share resources with other states via eXtension, the National School IPM Website and working groups; 3) recognize and reward school districts practicing verifiable IPM. School districts that we propose to target for intensive IPM training and implementation described in this proposal are positively impacting 419,992 schoolaged children in Florida (Florida Dept. of Education 2005 Enrollment Statistics). The health risks associated with unnecessary pesticide use are undeniable, ranging from acute poisoning, to high correlations with respiratory disorders, endocrine disruption and cognitive impairment. From 2004-2006 we site-visited over 25 schools in 4 school districts, with >90% of the schools receiving multiple site visits. Thus, we were able to assess practices and behaviors, not just see a snapshot in time. The most stunning result of our site visits over the last three years has been the invalidation of previous mail-in surveys indicating that over 90% of Florida schools practiced IPM. In fact, we now believe that only 5-7% of schools practice IPM, thus placing children at risk for the unnecessary exposure to pesticides, creating a critical need to address pest management practices in schools. Resource sharing is critically important to the survival of school IPM programs nationally with ever shrinking dollars. The University of Florida houses the National School IPM Website which was previously funded by EPA. It is currently partially supported by an IPM Florida grant. We also successfully competed for an eXtension grant to develop a Community of Practice (CoP) for urban pest management. The first area of development for our eXtension project will be material for pest management in sensitive areas, including schools, thus allowing us to leverage technology resources provided by eXtension. Finally, independent validation of IPM adoption and implementation will be achieved through IPMStar certification. We propose the initiation of certification for two school districts who have documented a high level of IPM implementation, positively impacting 195 schools and 117,513 students. Both Brevard and Manatee have participated in the Florida School IPM program since its inception in 1996. Objectives: Since 2004, we have developed a successful model for integrated pest management (IPM) implementation in schools. The key factors to the success of our model are 1) a well managed school district and effective communication with the people who most greatly impact pests and pest management, 2) allowing for the time it takes to effect behavioral changes so that they can be incorporated into the school pest management system once IPM concepts are presented; and 3) follow-up on newly learned pest management applications that are based in science. We find that it takes approximately 2 to 3 years for IPM to be incorporated into a school system with periodic, but continual system maintenance. Thus, our objectives for furthering IPM in schools are listed below according to the level of IPM adoption. Finally, a key factor for success is recognition and rewards for school personnel who do so much with so little. 1. Implementation and maintenance of school IPM at various adoption levels: a. Prepare Brevard and Manatee school districts for independent certification as a measure of successful IPM implementation via IPMStar, positively impacting 195 schools and 117,513 students. b. Continue training and adoption of IPM methods in 2006 expansion pilots Duval and Sarasota school districts impacting an additional 236 schools and 168,419 students. c. Expansion of verifiable IPM in Alachua, Pasco, and St. Lucie school districts, impacting another 199 schools and 128,060 students. d. Verifiable implementation will be measured via cost analysis, pest monitoring and numbers of pesticide applications e. Provide introductory sessions to school districts requesting information and training on how to develop and IPM program via in-service of school district personnel or county agents, particularly in conjunction with the health department personnel. f. Educate change agents involved with the implementation of IPM (State Lead Agencies, Extension, PCOs, and Public Health) with regard to program initiation, implementation and evaluation of IPM in the public school environment. 2. Resource sharing: continue to update and maintain the National School IPM Website (http://schoolipm.ifas.ufl.edu/), particularly the National Toolbox section previously supported by EPA and eXtension as a method of resource sharing. 3. Recognize and reward schools and districts that practice verifiable IPM. |
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