Our Impact
At the National Environmental Education Foundation, we provide objective environmental information to help Americans live better every day. At a time of conflicting and challenging messages about the state of our environment, we provide trusted knowledge, resources and opportunities to improve our lives and the health of the planet.
Working with a network of health professionals, weathercasters, land managers and teachers, we create and leverage public-private partnerships to promote daily actions for helping people live well while protecting and enjoying the environment.
Click a link below to see our program's impacts and accomplishments:
Improving Our Health
Our Health and Environment program gives health professionals the tools and knowledge they need to diagnose, treat and prevent conditions caused by environmental threats, such as pediatric asthma. Groundbreaking programs like our Pediatric Environmental History Initiative stand to revolutionize the way the health care industry views the environment.
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Our Children’s Environmental Health Faculty Champions, who have been through our environmental health trainings, have themselves trained another 2,000 faculty members in the past year.
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Our Pediatric Asthma Faculty Champions have trained 1,600 health care professionals since January 2007. We are projecting that in the next three years they will train another 4,500 medical faculty members, who will reach 90,000 medical residents and health care students, enabling them to bring this knowledge into their practice.
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Kaiser Permanente has integrated our Asthma Guidelines into their Clinical Library intranet site, giving us potential reach to their 139,000 employees and 8.4 million members.
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28 leading medical and educational institutions have signed on to NEEF’s position statement on the importance of environmental education in healthcare, including:
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American Academy of Pediatrics
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American Public Health Association
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National Medical Association
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Physicians for Social Responsibility
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The EPA honored our work by naming us one of the recipients of the 2006 Children’s Environmental Health Excellence Award.
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Since May 2006, approximately 7,500 copies of our environmental health resources have been distributed to health care providers. In addition, we have several associations promoting our online materials through their networks.
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Our Pediatric Environmental History forms are featured in the fourth edition of the book Pediatric Primary Care
Promoting Ideas for Every Day
Promoting Ideas for Every Day
For many Americans, the weather is the clearest connection between the environment and their daily lives. That’s why we partner with the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to work with weathercasters across the country to draw links between weather and environmental topics like water and air quality, and wildlife and public health.
- Earth Gauge™ is used by more than 130 local meteorologists and radio broadcasters in 85 media markets, which reach over 175 million television viewers or 57% of the population, and 1.7 million radio listeners.
- Earth GaugeTM action tips are being disbursed to 15 of the top 20 largest media markets, including the top three largest markets -- New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
- Earth Gauge™ has a major partnership with The Weather Channel, which reaches 87 million households daily. They use our tips on-air 2-3 times a day and use our Climate Facts feature on their Forecast Earth website.
- Earth Gauge™ is going beyond the broadcast to educate meteorologists and their viewers:
- 37 National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologists receive Earth Gauge™ and use it in their materials and to better communicate with their local meteorologists.
- Local meteorlogists are using Earth Gauge™ in their outreach to classrooms and communities.
- Select NBC stations use Earth Gauge™ action tips in the Going Green section of their website.
Caring for Our Public Lands
Our public lands program works to increase environmental stewardship through education and volunteerism. Our signature event for this effort is National Public Lands Day, the nation’s largest single day for improving and enhancing the public lands that are a vital part of America’s heritage.
More than 1,300 parks and other public land areas benefited from the work provided by 110,000 volunteers in every state of the nation. Eight federal land management agencies and over 500 city, county, state, and other local recreation, park and resource departments participated.
On September 29th, 2007, National Public Lands Day volunteers...
- Removed 500,000 pounds of trash;
- Collected 100,000 pounds of invasive plants;
- Built and maintained over 720 miles of trails;
- Planted over 55,000 trees, shrubs, and other plants and;
- Made an estimated $12 million of improvements to our public lands.
Transforming Education
For three years National Environmental Education Week has been building a community of educators that value teaching the environment in their classrooms. Through this week-long celebration, we reach millions of students by encouraging educational preparation, learning and activities in K-12 classrooms, nature centers, zoos, museums and aquaria.
- In 2007, 1,453 partners signed-on to deliver environmental education to over 3.5 million students.
- We launched EE Week in 2007 at the New York High School for Environmental Studies, where our national spokesperson, Alexandria Cousteau, talked with students and helped them with an energy audit.
- We conducted a National Nature Bee in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation, encouraging students to broaden their knowledge of the natural world.
- EE Week 2007 focused on energy conservation and engaged a cadre of prestigious national partners, including the National Education Association, EPA, National Audubon Society, Earth Day Network National Science Teachers Association, ABC, GM, the Alliance to Save Energy and Girl Scouts USA, enabling us to reach more teachers and students.
The National Environmental Education Foundation prides itself on its long history of strong and cooperative patnerships. We strive to bring all parties to the table and create lasting public/private relationships. You can find out more in our Partners section.