About Us

The Healthy Children Organizing Project (HCOP), a project of Consumer Action,  is a 15-year-old San Francisco-based advocacy and “community education by-the-community” organization. Our goal is to protect young children from environmental hazards in San Francisco’s low-income communities.  HCOP changed its name from the Lead Poisoning Prevention Project over seven years ago because children are exposed to many toxins in their environment that significantly affect their health and well-being. Our efforts include protecting young children from lead hazards, environmental asthma triggers, and exposures to other disease and disability-causing toxic chemicals wherever they live, learn and play.

HCOP has engaged in numerous environmental and social justice projects to protect young children from environmental hazards. Our main strategies include:

• working with community groups to: [1] integrate environmental health promotion and disease prevention into culturally appropriate family and children services for low-income parents; and, [2] advocate that city agencies providing family and children’s services and private property owners do their share to prevent childhood diseases caused by exposures to environmental hazards;
• advocating to reduce environmental hazards in public facilities—schools, public housing and recreation and park sites;
• advocating to improve and expand the Department of Public Health’s efforts to protect low-income children and families from environmental hazards; and,
• sponsoring passage and monitoring implementation of landmark legislation to make private housing lead-safe, healthy environments for children in San Francisco — education alone is not enough.

We’ve developed multi-faceted, effective strategies with a strong record of success and widespread support for our efforts. We mobilize all of San Francisco’s resources in this effort because we believe that everyone serving families is responsible for helping parents raise healthy children. We want to create system-wide change in San Francisco to protect all low-income children from environmental hazards.  We need healthy environments to have healthy children, healthy families and healthy communities that can sustain themselves and experience real social and environmental justice.

To view the Healthy Children Organizing Project Model for Success (see below) in PDF format, click here.