EHP children's health page. (EHP net).

As the field of children's health has developed and grown over recent years, so has its coverage in the pages of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). Since the journal's beginnings in the early 1970s, when the idea of children's health as a discipline was yet to be conceived, EHP has published articles on child-relevant issues such as lead toxicity and arsenic-induced changes in children's hearing abilities. Today, an entire issue is devoted to the topic each year, and a new monthly children's health research section is being launched this month.

To provide a one-stop online resource for information on children's health, EHP now introduces a new webpage devoted to the subject, located at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/children/. Continual updates and expansions are planned for the page, which went live this summer.

On the site, visitors can find a list of EHP's most current news and research articles on children's health. Also featured are links to each of the past annual issues devoted primarily to children's health topics and a link to EHP's Environews by Topic: Children's Health page, which contains the complete listing of over 100 news articles published in the journal on the subject since 1993.

The site also provides highlights of the research conducted at the 12 Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research. Initiated in 1998 by the NIEHS in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the primary goal of this centers program is to develop applied intervention and prevention methods based on basic research findings. The first eight centers established focus on the fields of growth and development and respiratory disease, while the work of the four newest is concentrated on neurodevelopment. The highlights provide brief descriptions of the centers' latest work along with links to their homepages.

A list of outside resources is available also, including a link to the recently released report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Managing Elevated Blood Lead Levels Among Young Children: Recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention. This report provides the first updated guidance on case management of children with elevated blood lead in over a decade. In addition, the site will soon offer a selection of upcoming conferences and seminars dealing with children's health issues.

The site also includes an overview of The Bangkok Statement and the full text of the document. The statement was drafted at the International Conference on Environmental Threats to the Health of Children, held in Bangkok, Thailand, in March 2002. Signed by educators, scientists, and policy makers from around the world, the statement is a pledge by conference participants to promote proactive strategies to protect children's health, and calls on the World Health Organization to support such efforts.