Organizational Objectives

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The Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions contain half of the world’s children and are among the most rapidly industrializing parts globally. As a result, environmental threats to children’s health are widespread. These environmental hazards range from traditional threats such as bacterial and parasitic contamination of drinking water, wood smoke in poorly ventilated dwellings; arsenic in groundwater; untreated manufacturing wastes released to landfills; chlorinated hydrocarbon, and organophosphorus pesticides; and atmospheric emissions from the combustion.  To address these problems, pediatricians, environmental health scientists, and public health workers throughout Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific have begun to build local and national research and prevention programs in children’s environmental health (CEH). There have been successes in Thailand, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan, for example. However, there is still a need for organizations, such as Advancing Research for Children’s Environmental Health (ARCeH), to increase awareness of environmental health hazards affecting children in these regions and throughout the world.  ARCeH can be helpful by assisting with providing the latest scientific/public health information on children’s vulnerability to environmental hazards and develop models for future policy and public health discussions on ways to improve children’s health.