Senior Staff Steering Committee
The Senior Staff Steering Committee (Steering Committee) is a group that supports the work of the Task Force by developing interdepartmental strategies to protect and promote children’s environmental health, and by tracking their implementation. The Steering Committee meets monthly and oversees the Task Force subcommittees and workgroups. Steering Committee meetings provide a forum for senior federal staff to work across agencies to share information and coordinate efforts.
Activities
No Safe Level: Key Federal Efforts to Protect Children from Lead
The Task Force has renewed efforts to address the multiple pathways of exposure to lead in children as a priority area. The Task Force first tackled this issue in 2000, when it released the report Eliminating Childhood Lead: A Federal Strategy Targeting Lead Paint Hazards. A new effort brings together, for the first time, descriptions of federal agency efforts currently planned or underway to address all sources of lead exposure in children in the report No Safe Level: Key Federal Efforts to Protect Children from Lead. This report presents the breadth of federal activities in this area, and provides a basis for increased collaboration to further reduce exposures to lead in children.
2015 Principals Meeting of the President's Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children
This meeting, held at HHS in October 2015, served to renew the federal commitment to protecting children from environmental health and safety risks and to endorse future interagency actions that promote children’s health and wellbeing. The meeting engaged the principals of the agencies named in Executive Order 13045. At the meeting, the HHS Secretary and the EPA Administrator requested the development of work plan to help guide future Task Force commitments.
News article: President's Task Force Recommits to Children's Environmental Health.
Work Plan
The Task Force work plan (557KB) (613KB) outlines the group's current top priorities and will serve to guide future Task Force activities and commitments.
Priorities:
- Reducing lead exposures: addressing sources of lead, such as paint, drinking water and consumer products, to protect children from exposures
- Protecting health in a changing climate: preparing families and communities to understand and minimize the effects of climate on children’s health
- Reducing the burden of environmentally related illnesses: addressing environmental origins of disease to promote children’s health and reduce health disparities
