Through its work on children’s environmental health, WHO strives to inform and influence policymakers and assess the effectiveness of programmes, which aim at improving children’s environmental health via:

Developing and promoting use of children's environmental health indicators

Improving assessment of children's environmental health and monitor the success or failure of interventions

Facilitating the ability of policy-makers to improve environmental conditions for children

The Initiative builds on existing international, regional and national work on child health and environmental indicators by initiating a series of regional pilots to develop, collect and report children’s environmental health indicators. The Initiative aims to ensure equal relevance of the indicators for the health and environment sectors so that both can monitor their efforts towards realizing healthy environments for healthy children.

The preparation of a “national children's environmental health profile” (or rapid assessment) on the status of children’s health and the environment, including chemical risks, enables countries to collect, analyze and use relevant information in a relatively fast and cost-efficient manner. The methodology is suitable for obtaining knowledge on the main environmental threats present in the settings where children live, learn, play and work. It also enables countries to identify existing resources and key partners in the promotion of children’s environmental health.

WHO develops these rapid assessments primarily based on input from government ministries and their responses to a set of questions on various themes. Other sources of input can be review of publications and reports, input of experts in different areas related to children’s health, and observation of the settings where children spend most of their time.