The study highlights how exposure to certain drugs, air pollution, parental work or habits such as smoking can contribute to increasing the risk of some birth defects.
A joint study between Claudia Ortiz, pediatrician at the Quintero Hospital in Chile, and Ferran Campillo, pediatrician at the PEHSU; with the collaboration of the Garrotxa Territorial Pediatric Team, and pediatric surgery at Parc Taulí in Sabadell.
The international journal Birth Defects Research has recently published an article on the environmental approach to congenital malformations in Garrotxa. It is a reference journal of the International Society for Research and Prevention of Congenital Malformations. The study highlights how exposure to certain drugs, air pollution, parental work or habits such as smoking can contribute to increasing the risk of some birth defects.
This publication has been possible thanks to the collaboration of several professionals, including Claudia Ortiz, a pediatrician from the Quintero Hospital in Chile who did a training stay at the Pediatric Environmental Health Unit of La Garrotxa (PEHSU) at the Foundation; and professionals from the Territorial Pediatric Team of La Garrotxa, pediatricians Anton Foguet, Ferran Campillo and Stephan Schneider; as well as the pediatric surgeon from Parc Taulí in Sabadell who provides surgical care to the youngest children in the region, Bernardo Núñez.
Environmental health and the “Green Page”
The article highlights the importance of addressing environmental factors in congenital malformations, and how tools such as the Green Page or the pediatric environmental clinical history can contribute not only to determining the causes and risk factors related to these health problems, but also to carrying out and promoting activities that promote their prevention. In this sense, the Pediatric Environmental Health Unit (PEHSU) of the Foundation has been carrying out environmental screening of pregnancy (“Green Page”) since 2016 for all pregnant couples who carry out pregnancy control and monitoring in La Garrotxa.
The Green Page is a tool developed by the World Health Organization in the 2000s with the aim of knowing the environmental risk factors that impact the health of children. It has subsequently been adapted to different contexts, and the Green Page of pregnancy was adapted by the Pediatric Environmental Health Unit of the Virgen de la Arrixaca University Clinical Hospital in Murcia. It received the Good Practices Award from the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System in 2015. Since then, it has been extended to various parts of the planet. In Catalonia, thanks to the training and dissemination of PEHSU in La Garrotxa through the Pediatric Environmental Health Reference Network, several primary care centers and hospitals throughout the country are already carrying out this activity.
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