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Negotiation/Advocacy
Robin Dahlberg/National ACLU Legal Department
The ACLU-NJ, along with the National ACLU and other advocacy organizations, has engaged in sustained advocacy around the issue of lead poisoning in New Jersey. We have documented many shortcomings in New Jersey's lead prevention programs including inadequate blood screening rates, failures to provide follow-up care to lead burdened children, and failures to abate lead contaminated housing. The Departments of Human Services and Health and Senior Services have agreed to work with our coalition of concerned organizations to develop pilot projects in Camden and Irvington. We seek to determine what types of activities and interventions increase the lead screening rates of children and improve the quality of case management services to leadburdened children. The project provides for aggressive parental education regarding the effects of lead on their children and the importance of testing, while at the same time provides pediatricians with a simple and inexpensive means of screening children for lead using what is known as the filter paper method. The filter paper method allows doctors to do lead screenings in their offices with a simple finger stick blood draw. This method is intended to encourage doctors to provide screenings in their offices, rather than referring patients to secondary laboratories for such tests, a practice which has proven a significant barrier for many parents. During the last week of September 2002, the ACLU and its coalition partners held press conferences in Camden and Irvington to announce the pilot projects. Those efforts are ongoing.
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