National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week: October 25-31, 2020

WELCOME TO NATIONAL LEAD POISONING PREVENTION WEEK 2020
Join us during this year’s National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week as we raise awareness about lead poisoning.

National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW) is October 25-31, 2020. NLPPW aims to help individuals, organizations, and state and local governments to work together to reduce childhood exposure to lead.

How will you make the greatest impact during CDC, EPA, HUD, and WHO’s week-long call to action to end childhood lead poisoning?

Join Us on October 27 for the 2020 #NLPPWchat

Mark your calendars! NCHH will host its fourth annual Twitter chat for National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week on Tuesday, October 27, 2020, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET (12:00 to 1:00 p.m. PT). All are invited to participate, but early registrants will receive the chat questions and other materials first. This year’s theme is “Communities in Action, Policies in Action.”

Register for the Twitter chat here.

The #NLPPWchat aims to:

  • Discuss lead poisoning prevention and response
  • Raise awareness about the sources of lead exposure
  • Share helpful initiatives, policies, and resources

Additional information, including chat questions and formatting information, will be available here in October (the file downloads automatically).

NOW AVAILABLE:  The Wakelet archive of the 2019 #NLPPWchat is now available. With the Wakelet tool, we’re able to present the full chat in a more organized way that still allows users to like, retweet, and reply to the original posts. View the Wakelet archive of the 2019 #NLPPWchat.

If you missed any of our previous chats and would like to be notified about future social media events, contact Christopher Bloom.

Official NLPPW2020 Campaign Materials

NOW AVAILABLE: Use the following official agency materials to promote National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week 2020 in your community:

Federal Agency Activities

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collaborate with their partners every year on a national outreach effort to observe National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW). The three key themes for 2020 follow below:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency collaborate with their partners every year on a national outreach effort to observe National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (NLPPW). The three key themes for 2020 are the following:
  • Get the Facts: Learn about the hazards of lead;
  • Get Your Home Tested: Learn how to minimize risks of lead exposure by hiring a certified professional to test older homes for lead; and
  • Get Your Child Tested: A simple blood test can detect lead.

HUD, EPA, and CDC will post messages on social media corresponding to each of the daily themes shown below. If you’re on Twitter, share messages sent from these social media accounts: @HUDgov, @HUDHealthyHomes, @EPA, and @CDCgov.

We’ll post the the agency event schedule once it’s announced.

  • Monday, October 26, 2020: Events TBA
  • Tuesday, October 27, 2020: Events TBA
  • Wednesday, October 28, 2020: Events TBA
  • Thursday, October 29, 2020: Events TBA
  • Friday, October 30, 2020: Events TBA

Note that we may still be showing some links to resources from the prior year’s Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. We’ll replace these with updated links for 2020 as soon as they become available.

International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action

The International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week of Action runs concurrently with awareness events in the United States. See the world, and check out resources related to this event.

Planning an Event? 
Share information about your event with others worldwide by registering your activity on the World Health Organization (WHO) website. (Note that the WHO links may not yet be updated for 2020.)

NCHH Webinar: Making an Impact!

NCHH and the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition have created a webinar entitled Lead Poisoning Prevention Week: Making an Impact! Watch the webinar to learn:

  • Clear actions and tools to plan a successful event
  • How to engage traditional media effectively
  • Simple steps to use social media to create buzz
  • How to engage and invite elected officials
  • Tools to easily include families impacted by lead and elevate their stories to increase understanding, awareness, and political will

Webinar resources:

  1. Planning Events
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  2. Effectively Engage Traditional Media
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  3. Building a Case for Elected Officials
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  4. Sharing Your Stories
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes
  5. Social Media
    Webinar | PowerPoint: slides and notes

NLPPW Blog Archive

For National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week 2019, NCHH published a blog on the topic of reviewing and overhauling existing codes and policies to improve enforcement of lead poisoning prevention measures.

  • NLPPW Blog: Tactical Thinking: Housing Codes and Lead Poisoning Prevention (Sarah Goodwin and David Jacobs, NCHH)

For National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week 2018, NCHH published a suite of guest blogs written by four of our 2017 Lead Poisoning Awareness Community Mini-Grant award recipients. These blogs are a great way to learn about what kinds of activities are possible for an organization with a smaller grant (in this case, $5,000) as well as pointers on how to create your own successful event.

As a special bonus, we also published a consumer guest blog in 2018, “When ‘Special’ Equals ‘Sick,'” which illustrates why National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week is so important. Find it here.

10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure

The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, released a seminal report in 2017, 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure. The Health Impact Project is a national initiative designed to promote the use of health impact assessments (HIAs) as a decision-making tool for policymakers.

The 10 Policies report is an excellent resource to use during National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. Learn more about it here.

Resources

Additional Related Resources

While the following materials aren’t specific to National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, they are popular materials that we’ve shared with many who were interested to learn how lead exposure affects them and their loved ones.