Reporting Back Pesticide Results to Family Child Care Home Directors

Child Care Health Consultants will provide an integrated pest management (IPM) intervention for ~30 family child care home directors. The intervention will include an educational component, collecting carpet dust samples, reporting back the pesticides identified in the carpet, and 7-monthly consultations to identify ways to reduce their exposure to pesticides and lower their long term health risks.

The 12-month IPM intervention study conducted in family child care homes will include baseline and post-intervention interviews with the family child care home director, surveys, environmental assessments, and carpet dust samples. The intervention will include an IPM educational meeting where the director will receive an IPM Toolkit and toolbox, learn about the health risks related to repeated pesticide use. Six monthly consultations will be provided to focus on the goals set by the director to increase their IPM practices, reduce their use of pesticides, and lower the health risks for the children in their care, themselves and their staff. Three months after baseline, study staff will share the results of the pesticides detected in the dust samples to individual family child care home directors using Digital Exposure Report-Back Interface (DERBI). Interviews throughout the study period will be conducted with the family child care home directors to explore their reactions to and understanding of results, health effects, decisions made, intention to change pest management strategies, and/or share the results with families and their community.