This year, the Children’s Environmental Health Network (CEHN) awards celebration takes place October 10 in Washington, DC. Among this year’s child health champion honorees is Valencia Bednar, student and volunteer for Kids Clean Air Force. She’ll be receiving the NOW Youth Leadership Award. We checked in with the executive director of CEHN, Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, about the awards and to learn more about her climate job.
Any conversation with Nse, as she’s known, who has been at the organization for 24 years—20 at the helm—is wide ranging. Whether she’s talking about the economic benefits of disease prevention, the green chemistry gap, or the link between environmental health and climate work (“It’s all planetary health!” she contends), children are at the forefront of every word she utters. “At the end of the day, I want healthier kids. I want asthma to go down. I don’t want children to have cancer with an environmental link. I don’t want lead poisoning, which we really know how to deal with. We do things in this country that are banned in other parts of the world. We have to ask ourselves why that is,” she says.
Tell the House of Representatives: Protect Our Children From Extreme Weather
Here’s more on Nse’s work—how she got into the field and what she does daily to support child and family health.
How do you describe your job?
I’m expected to be the visionary for our team. I help motivate not just for funding but finding the strategic ways to uplift and leverage the protection of children. I do some research. We try to work with researchers—give them ideas about the gaps we are seeing while they’re working on what’s next.
Most of CEHN’s work is in the translation of the science available and lived experience. Data and stats take too long sometimes. The science is necessary and important, but we don’t wait. We try to fill the science void. We have 30-plus years now of this field of science. Protecting kids from air pollutants and water was just starting then. We can’t claim ignorance now. The communities and kids are showing us by the state of their health in a comprehensive way.
We should have made more progress by what we now have. We have more people in the field, more understanding that kids are extremely vulnerable. And who wants to be against kids? We have a mission that’s a no-brainer. It’s universal, it’s bipartisan, but we are needed more than ever.
What does that look like day to day?
My number one role is raising awareness that children are being harmed through many modalities and in many cases that harm can be prevented or reduced significantly. I will talk to anyone who will listen: research, business, coalitions, parents, grandparents, community and justice groups. Kids shouldn’t be the afterthought if you are developing policy. I’m building awareness and partnerships and raising the vulnerability of children related to environmental and climate threats.
How did you land your job? Is there a degree for it?
I was going to be a pediatrician. I was dead set on that from middle school. My junior year in college, I was miserable. It wasn’t just taking the MCATS; it’s that there was something else tugging at me. I listened. I believe in listening to intuition, especially as women.
I went to my advisor, and he didn’t know what I was trying to describe: I have a passion for protecting children, but I also want to think about what’s happening when the individual is doing everything she can but lives in a family and a community. What if those implications are harming you and you don’t know it? I was describing public health. I didn’t change my passion route, I just elevated it.
When I got into my maternal and child health program, I found my ease and my people. But you don’t need a masters of public health. There are people working in public health that come from a range of backgrounds.
How does your job relate to and fight the climate crisis?
Climate change is the biggest children’s environmental health issue globally. It exacerbates everything else we work on. Think of major pathways of exposure—air, water, food, built environment, production of products—and all the negative health outcomes. It only accelerates with our climate crisis, and it poses other infractions: flooding, droughts, trauma. Kids have now seen things no one their age should see. That has lifelong impacts. Some have been through multiple hurricanes and have been displaced many times. With the rising heat index, before a child is even born, they’re having health impacts with lifelong implications.
I see climate change as the big umbrella mothership. Every time we work on trying to reduce fossil fuels and greenhouse gases, that’s a positive return on air pollution and water. It’s a very connected nexus.
What do you want people just starting their careers to consider?
The inclusion of health in the climate discussion came late. In hindsight, we needed to incorporate implications of climate a decade before we did. It’s not an addition, it’s an inclusion. You can take anything you’re passionate about and find a way it aligns with climate. My older son is in engineering. You may be at a for-profit to get your feet wet, and then you can think clearly about where your skill set should be added. This summer, he was working on how to get solar from space through a NASA program and power military bases. We need to take technology and apply it here. We can do that with home, schools, childcare. We have the innovations.
In your work, what are your typical battles about climate?
We are a national and growing global network. Depending on where you are, there are buzzwords. Climate change turns off certain parts of society, and some people have been told you aren’t supposed to say it. It’s frustrating. I don’t alter my language, but I know colleagues do. They aren’t selling their soul, they are picking their battles. They are doing the work and titling it differently sometimes when speaking to community and elected leaders. They have seen people attacked. People now need security because of speaking up on what is real. One colleague had to move because people didn’t like how she was testifying. This is where we are. It’s a weird dynamic of being as robust and forward thinking as possible, but I don’t want to put my staff in harm.
What keeps you motivated when your work is challenging?
The children. They have been a consistent passion. Every time I hear a child speak, I am blown out of the water. Some of it is sad. The kids have to grow up so fast. There’s so much our kids have to weed through. I believe wholeheartedly in supporting our kids at early ages in simple ways—just showing up to do what we say we are going to do. We have to protect the younger generation. I want to see these health outcomes turn course in my lifetime.
Tell the House of Representatives: Protect Our Children From Extreme Weather