NCHH Announces The Healthy Housing Clearinghouse

Healthy Homes – From A to Z

Looking for research on the efficacy of asthma interventions in the home? What about information related to preventing damp basements? The National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) has created a comprehensive database of peer-reviewed research and guidance documents related to healthy homes issues through the National Healthy Housing Clearinghouse www.healthyhousing.org/clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse, which is funded through a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is intended to provide researchers, policymakers, and program staff easy access to the latest research on housing and health issues. The site contains more than 600 documents and is updated monthly. The information is useful for:

Writing presentations, grant proposals, and reports that need to document the evidence connecting housing conditions to specific disease outcomes;

Learning best practices for housing professionals (e.g. construction, rehabilitation, maintenance practices) and health professionals (e.g. environmental disease management, resident education programs, and home visits); and

Informing the development of new healthy homes policies, research projects, and programs.

The user-friendly site enables keyword searches as well as searches by document/article title, author, journal or publication name, publication date or abstract. For example, if you enter the keywords "asthma interventions" you will receive 14 results ranging from peer-reviewed research (e.g. Chicago Community-Based Asthma Intervention Trial: Feasibility of Delivering Peer Education in an Inner-City Population) to governmental documents (e.g. the Surgeon General's workshop on healthy indoor environment – January 12-13, 2005). A keyword search for "mold" brings up more than 140 results.

Where the publisher has granted permission, the full text articles are available. Where such permission has not been granted, the Clearinghouse provides a full citation and abstract as well as a link to the publisher so that you can access the information.