What is the Michigan Center for the Environment & Children's Health (MCECH)?

The Michigan Center for the Environment & Children's Health (MCECH - pronounced "M-Check") is one of 12 "Centers of Excellence for Children's Environmental Health" funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for five years, beginning in the fall of 1998.  MCECH is a community-based participatory research initiative which is seeking to investigate the environmental, pathophysiological and clinical mechanisms of childhood asthma and to evaluate comprehensive community and household level interventions aimed at reducing asthma-related environmental threats to children, families and neighborhoods.

What are the aims of MCECH?

There are three projects of MCECH - two of which have been integrated into one project called Community Action Against Asthma (CAAA) which is being implemented in the southwest and east sides of Detroit, and one which is based at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, Chemokines in the Pathogenesis of Asthma.  The three projects are engaged in coordinated interdisciplinary research aimed at:

• increasing knowledge and behavior to reduce environmental hazards in households and neighborhoods, thereby improving asthma-related health status, through a community-based household and neighborhood level intervention;
  
  
• examining the effects of daily and seasonal fluctuations in indoor and outdoor ambient air quality on pulmonary function and severity of asthma symptoms; and
  
  
• determining the effects of allergen-induced local, excessive production of chemokines on redox status and innervation of the bronchial tree.

How is MCECH unique?

• MCECH, following a set of community-based participatory research principles, equitably involves all partners in all aspects of the research and intervention process and emphasizes the local relevance of issues concerning children's environmental health.
• MCECH's projects build upon the local knowledge of community members, and the expertise from an interdisciplinary team of researchers, in a collaborative effort that is obtaining a better understanding of the indoor, outdoor and psychosocial environmental triggers of childhood asthma, and is implementing strategies to reduce those triggers.

What are the benefits of MCECH?

The three projects of the Michigan Center for the Environment and Children's Health will provide the following benefits to the Detroit communities involved as well as to the asthma research community:

• identification of previously undiagnosed asthmatic children;
• provision of household materials, such as vacuum cleaners and clean bedding, aimed at reducing asthma triggers;
• education on potential asthma triggers and methods for reducing those triggers;
• assistance to families for negotiation with landlords regarding environmental factors in the home associated with asthma;
• referrals to families with asthma for available and affordable medical care;
• the collection of detailed multiple daily measures of ambient and indoor air contaminants;
• identification of the underlying mechanisms of asthma and potential targets for further intervention.

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