National Center for Healthy Housing, Inc.
Better housing. Better health.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
For most Americans, home provides security and shelter, but homes that are poorly constructed or maintained can significantly impact the health and safety of residents. The fact is, much more needs to be done to make homes safe, healthy, and affordable, especially among low-income families. Fortunately, we have a strong evidence base of what works to create healthier home environments, improve health, and provide real savings to the healthcare and other sectors.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Community Capacity and Awareness Building
NCHH is a valuable resource to housing, health, governmental, and other organizations due to its unique ability to identify and convert credible science, technical expertise, and over 25 years of practical experience into accessible and useful information for dissemination, local adaptation, and program growth. Through these efforts, we’ve helped programs and communities develop needed and effective cross-sector partnerships, and led community efforts to promote healthy housing through services to residents, policy changes, innovative funding, and impact evaluation. We’ve also amassed a wealth of resources, tools, model codes, best practices, expertise, data, and diverse expert partners that can be deployed to scale up these efforts in communities across the country. NCHH is widely acknowledged as the go to resource for credible and practical healthy housing information and we actively work to increase awareness among key stakeholders and decision-makers.
Examples of recent work in this area include:
o Leading the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership to equip communities with the necessary tools to effect systems-level change and improve health outcomes.
o Providing mini-grants and coaching to 16 communities through the National Lead Poisoning Prevention Network and the CDC Health in All Policies + Lead Collaborative.
o Providing project management, technical assistance, and evaluation support to the New York State Childhood Lead Poisoning Primary Prevention Program, that reaches over 10,000 homes per year.
o Providing training and technical assistance to organizations in 30 states to increase capacity to secure sustainable financing for home-based asthma services.
o Moderating HealthyHomesNet and LeadNet, with a combined total of 1,400 subscribers representing a broad cross-section of public and private stakeholders.
Practical Research
NCHH designs research and evaluation activities with both policy and practice in mind and embarks on projects that are timely, relevant, and oriented toward implementation. NCHH translates credible, science-based research into practical solutions. Numerous research studies conducted by NCHH scientists have made valuable contributions to understanding the connections between housing and health and have shaped federal and state regulations and practices.
Since 1992, NCHH has managed over 100 multidisciplinary projects, worked with a broad array of federal, state, and local agencies, universities, community groups, and private research institutions, and published and contributed to over 150 articles and reports on environmental health and housing issues.
Examples of recent research activities include:
o Aging Gracefully in Place, evaluating the replicability of JHU’s “Community Aging in Place, Advancing Better Living for Elders” (CAPABLE) intervention model in four real-world settings across the country.
o Publishing a set of three articles evaluating the impact of the state-funded New York State Healthy Neighborhoods Program on housing conditions, asthma outcomes in children and adults, and healthcare costs.
o Evaluating the health-based co-benefits of energy upgrades.
o Assessing the impact of ventilation and other precautionary measures on radon levels after weatherization.
o Examining sources and pathways of childhood lead exposure.
o Assessing the impact of ventilation and other precautionary measures on radon levels after weatherization.
o Examining sources and pathways of childhood lead exposure.
Date-Driven Advocacy
NCHH provides expertise, facilitation, and support to government agencies, legislative bodies, and advocates as they establish policies and procedures to create healthier homes through laws and regulations. Despite the challenging political environment, we’ve worked with our allies to secure historic increases in funding for key federal programs since 2017.
Partnerships
Our partnerships are a fundamental ingredient to our success. Our achievements are shared with a diverse set of national, state, and local collaborators who share our commitment to healthy housing.
Examples of some key partnerships include:
o NCHH convenes the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition, a broad voluntary coalition serving over 600 individual members representing more than 400 organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
o NCHH’s Executive Director is the co-chair of the National Environmental Health Partnership Council.
o We convene the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership and the National Lead Poisoning Prevention Network, and are members of the Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative, the National Disaster Recovery Coalition, National Low-Income Housing Coalition, National Radon Workgroup, Children’s Budget Coalition, National Home Safety and Home Modification Workgroup, CDC HiAP + Lead Collaborative, and more.
Where we work
External reviews
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Everyone deserves a safe and healthy place to call home. Through meaningful partnership, practical research, community capacity and awareness building, and data-driven advocacy, we create systems and structures that reduce disparities and transform lives by transforming housing.
Partnerships: Our partnerships are a fundamental ingredient to our success. Our achievements are shared with a diverse set of national, state, and local collaborators who share our commitment to healthy housing.
Community Capacity and Awareness Building: NCHH is a valuable resource to housing, health, governmental, and other organizations due to its unique ability to identify and convert credible science, technical expertise, and over 25 years of practical experience into accessible and useful information for dissemination, local adaptation, and program growth. Through these efforts, we’ve helped programs and communities develop needed and effective cross-sector partnerships, and led community efforts to promote healthy housing through services to residents, policy changes, innovative funding, and impact evaluation. We’ve also amassed a wealth of resources, tools, model codes, best practices, expertise, data, and diverse expert partners that can be deployed to scale up these efforts in communities across the country. NCHH is widely acknowledged as the go to resource for credible and practical healthy housing information and we actively work to increase awareness among key stakeholders and decision-makers.
Practical Research: NCHH designs research and evaluation activities with both policy and practice in mind and embarks on projects that are timely, relevant, and oriented toward implementation. NCHH translates credible, science-based research into practical solutions. Numerous research studies conducted by NCHH scientists have made valuable contributions to understanding the connections between housing and health and have shaped federal and state regulations and practices.
Data-Driven Advocacy: NCHH provides expertise, facilitation, and support to government agencies, legislative bodies, and advocates as they establish policies and procedures to create healthier homes through laws and regulations.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Our action areas and strategic goals for 2020-2025 are:
Action Area 1. Identify and disseminate practical and proven steps for creating healthy homes for all.
•Goal 1.1. Identify and fill gaps in the scientific understanding of hazards in the home environment and their impact on health.
•Goal 1.2. Identify and fill gaps in the scientific understanding of how to prevent or fix hazards in the home environment and associated costs and benefits of these solutions.
•Goal 1.3. Consider a diverse range of communities and populations in designing research and translating and disseminating findings.
•Goal 1.4. Translate both NCHH- and partner-led research into accessible and actionable resources.
Action Area 2. Advocate for evidence-based healthy homes practices and programs at the federal, state, and local levels.
•Goal 2.1. Organize and support local advocates’ participation in setting and influencing policy at the federal, state, and local levels.
•Goal 2.2. Organize and support efforts to maintain or increase funding for key federal programs and provide support for similar efforts at the state and local levels.
•Goal 2.3. Advocate with allied organizations for policies that prevent housing-related illness and injury.
Action Area 3. Equip communities and practitioners to overcome barriers and improve their capacity to create healthier housing.
•Goal 3.1. Provide and mobilize context-specific tools and resources.
•Goal 3.2. Provide timely and responsive coaching and technical assistance to communities.
•Goal 3.3. Facilitate connections to peers and experts and attract new talent to the field.
•Goal 3.4. Provide support to communities seeking to improve housing quality and reduce the burden of housing-related illness and injury.
Action Area 4. Provide a platform for exchange on a broad range of healthy housing issues and be prepared to respond to emerging needs within the field.
•Goal 4.1. Provide a range of opportunities for practitioners to share information on healthy housing.
•Goal 4.2. Actively recruit partners to share information on diverse and emerging topics.
•Goal 4.3. Participate in meetings, conferences, workgroups, and events that challenge and expand our understanding of healthy housing and our role in it.
Action Area 5. Communicate broadly and effectively to mobilize action on healthy housing.
•Goal 5.1. Create a simpler and more compelling story for NCHH and the field of healthy housing.
•Goal 5.2. Share tools and resources to help partners and communities improve their communications capacity and effectiveness.
•Goal 5.3. Improve range, efficiency, and timeliness of communications tools
•Goal 5.4. Serve as a voice for the healthy housing movement.
Action Area 6. Strengthen NCHH as an institution in service to the field of healthy housing.
•Goal 6.1. Strengthen, equip, and activate NCHH’s Board of Directors.
•Goal 6.2. Invest in and expand staff capacity and diversity.
•Goal 6.3. Create a reserve fund.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
As the preeminent national nonprofit dedicated to securing healthy homes for all, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) is a highly regarded and credible change agent, successfully integrating healthy housing advocacy, research, and capacity-building under one roof to reduce health disparities nationwide. NCHH staff have been involved in many major advances related to healthy housing and lead poisoning prevention, including playing key roles in the passage and implementation of Title X, the groundbreaking Rochester Blood and Dust Study, the first Guidelines for the Evaluation and Control of Lead-Based Paint Hazards in Housing, the congressionally chartered Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction and Financing Task Force, the first National Evaluation of the HUD Lead Hazard Control grant program, training over 48,000 professionals through the National Healthy Homes Training Center and Network and RRP training network, staffing the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition, convening the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership, and the development of the 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure report.
NCHH has a long history of serving as a convener for the healthy housing field and manages two listservs, Leadnet and Healthyhomesnet, that have a combined 1,400 subscribers. The organization also works extensively with communities across the country and has a demonstrated track record of helping local organizations and agencies achieve impact at the state and local levels. Since 1992, NCHH has managed over 100 multidisciplinary projects, worked with a broad array of federal, state, and local agencies, universities, community groups, and private research institutions, and published and contributed to over 150 articles and reports on environmental health and housing issues. Since 2017, NCHH has provided technical assistance to over 75 communities spanning all 10 federal regions, providing opportunities for spread of best practices. These assets and relationships are critical for seeking input from and disseminating best practices to a diverse range of communities.
NCHH's staff includes housing, health, and environmental professionals with expertise in biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental health, public health, housing policy, industrial hygiene, healthcare financing, governmental relations, meeting facilitation, and communications. NCHH draws on its unique expertise to unite leaders in the public health, housing, and environmental communities in establishing safe and healthy homes for families across all income levels. Staff qualifications are described in greater detail online.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
For nearly three decades, NCHH has demonstrated its unique ability to:
•Convene and lead the healthy housing movement
•Conduct practical research and evaluation into housing innovations that improve health
•Translate and disseminate credible science into useful tools
•Equip and mobilize communities into action to create healthier home environments
•Garner broad cross-sectoral support for better housing
•Advocate for and with routinely marginalized populations
An overview of NCHH’s history and key accomplishments is available online at https://nchh.org/who-we-are/history-and-accomplishments/, but selected accomplishments include:
•NCHH staff have been involved in many major advances related to healthy housing and lead poisoning prevention, including playing key roles in the passage and implementation of Title X, the groundbreaking Rochester Blood and Dust Study, the first Guidelines for the Evaluation and Control of Lead-Based Paint Hazards in Housing, the congressionally chartered Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction and Financing Task Force, the first National Evaluation of the HUD Lead Hazard Control grant program, and the development of the 10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure report.
•NCHH has been instrumental in work at the intersection of energy efficiency and healthy housing, including NCHH-led research on the impacts of green rehab and contributions to reports summarizing the health and cost benefits of residential energy improvements, Home RX: The Health Benefits of Home Performance with for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Occupant Health Benefits of Residential Energy Efficiency for E4TheFuture.
•Through multiple training networks, NCHH has helped to train more than 50,000 healthy housing professionals.
•Since 2009 NCHH has convened and staffed the National Safe and Healthy Housing Coalition. The coalition has over 600 members representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
•NCHH has served as a go-to resource for healthcare financing of healthy homes services, contributing to the evidence-base of the return on investment, documenting the landscape, spreading best practices, and providing coaching to communities seeking investment from the healthcare sector.
•NCHH has partnered with communities across the country to strengthen local housing codes, implement proactive rental inspection programs, and improve enforcement.
•NCHH serves as the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Research and Training on Housing Related Disease and Injury Prevention.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
-
How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
-
Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
-
What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
Unlock nonprofit financial insights that will help you make more informed decisions. Try our monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights?
Learn more
about GuideStar Pro.
Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
National Center for Healthy Housing, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/21/2024
Ms. Shannon Melton
Ignite Nebraska
Term: 2023 - 2026
Read Holman
Unite Us
Shannon Melton
Ignite Nebraska
Jerome Chester
National Association of County and City Health Officials
Desiree de la Torre
Children's National Hospital
Melanie Hudson
MH Public Affairs, LLC
Jumana Vasi
JVasi Consulting, LLC
Jill Wohl
Housing Partnership Network
Will Yang
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Aaron Haeir
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
-
Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as: