A team of Emory University doctors is asking for community involvement on Dec. 4 in a proposed program to assist local children who have developmental problems. Emory will hold a workshop called "From Pollution to Solution." The workshop's title stems from the team's interest in "putting Anniston back on the map as a positive place to live," said Janice Nodvin, program administrator for Emory's Rollins School of Public Health's Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit.
The goal of the workshop is to launch a plan for a long-term program. Dr. Leslie Rubin, an Emory pediatrician who specializes in developmental disorders, will moderate the workshop and solicit local opinions. The workshop will be at the Anniston City Meeting Center Dec 4 from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The Emory team's interest in assisting Anniston children sprung from the pollution woes of PCB and lead contamination. But the program will not be a full-blown study to prove or disprove cause and effect of environmental contaminants in local children.
The doctors hope to obtain crucial involvement from the local school systems.
"The purpose of this is not to be thinking litigiously and not to be thinking of the past," Nodvin said.
After spending almost a year discussing options with state and local health officials and other community leaders, the team envisions a program to provide early detection for developmental, learning and behavioral difficulties within local school systems, Nodvin said.
"For those children that are high risk or have behavioral or learning difficulty, we will be trying to find out what that difficulty is and what we can do to make their lives better. There could be adaptations in classroom, something as comprehensive as a medical assessment or psychological assessment, specific treatments or parent education. It can be a whole array of things," she said.
What remains is to gather input from local doctors, educators, city council officials and interested residents. Representatives of all of the above groups have been invited to the workshop, she said.
The Star contacted Dr. Robert Kaley, director of environmental affairs for Solutia, Inc., the Monsanto spin-off company that is required to clean up the PCB pollution in Anniston, for his opinion about the program.
"That (kind of program) is what the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has been promising the community all along," Kaley said.
For more information about the workshop, call 877-337-3478 or 770-956-9636.
