18th June 2025
Clean Air, Strong Starts: raising families’ air pollution and climate change awareness for healthier beginnings in life
In celebration of Clean Air Day 2025, this iHV Voices blog has been written by Charlotte Ridley-Rundle, a Senior Consultant at MP Smarter Travel (MPST) who works to strengthen the building blocks of human health and wellbeing, like clean air, green spaces, and active and sustainable transport. Charlotte shares information about Clean Air, Strong Starts: a programme of awareness-raising workshops on air pollution, climate change and health which she’s running with Richmond Council and Wandsworth Council for local parents and caregivers who are expecting or have children under 5-years-old. As trusted and uniquely placed child health professionals, health visitors are warmly invited to join families at the workshops to learn, share insights, and support the project’s advocacy for clean air and maternal and child health.
Charlotte Riley-Rundle, Senior Consultant at MP Smarter Travel
Every year, Clean Air Day reminds us of the need to take positive action on air pollution – the single greatest environmental threat to public health in the UK. Encouraging greater awareness and supporting behaviour change to improve air quality is a key focus of ours at MPST. We also recognise that some groups suffer more severe health impacts from air pollution than others. The most vulnerable need the most support.
Babies’ and children’s bodies are developing, and more often exposed to the highest concentrations of pollutants, meaning that they are more vulnerable than adults. There is also a growing body of evidence that exposure to high levels of air pollution during pregnancy can increase the risk of pre-term births and low birth weights. Harm at these times can lead to lifelong health burdens. Climate change hazards, such as heatwaves and flooding, also pose significant risks during pregnancy and to child health. The two challenges – air pollution and climate change – share many of the same causes, impacts, and solutions. As babies and children depend entirely on adults for protection against harm, parents and caregivers need to be supported to make and pass on healthy and sustainable choices.
Clean Air, Strong Starts aims to improve awareness among parents-to-be and caregivers of young children in Richmond Council and Wandsworth Council about the shared causes, impacts, and solutions to both air pollution and climate change. From May 2025 to March 2026, we’ll be running free Clean Air, Strong Starts workshops across both boroughs to help make this a reality. The programme supports families in taking small, practical steps to protect their health and give children a strong start in life.
We’ve designed our workshops to be a safe space for new and expectant parents to learn more about these topics without shame or added burden. Our workshops aim to help participants feel comfortable sharing their experiences, confident in the knowledge they build with us, and empowered to then make a small lifestyle change to prevent ill health.
Our workshops offer different ways for parents to engage and learn: an interactive presentation (delivered in plain English to avoid confusing jargon), mood-boards to write on, small group discussions, and making pledges to take small, practical clean air and climate actions. After the workshop, we share our contact details, should families want more support or have questions that they would feel more comfortable asking privately.
We also encourage other trusted and expert voices including local health visitors and other healthcare professionals to join the workshops. Bringing different disciplines together is important, helping to ensure that education on air pollution and climate change covers the challenges’ many facets and is therefore effective. Coming from a sustainable transport background, for instance, I’ve learnt a lot from the iHV’s Our Air, My Lungs project and RCPCH’s Air Pollution Companion and use these resources to align our workshops with accurate, up-to-date, and child-focused medical expertise.
We’re running the workshops where they are needed most: in areas facing higher levels of air pollution and deprivation. Communities in these areas often have heightened vulnerabilities, including existing medical conditions and less control over their exposure to pollutants. When suggesting clean air and climate actions in our workshops, we focus on the things they can control. Clear, actionable tips, such as walking or cycling short distances when they can, help to empower parents and caregivers rather than overwhelm them.
To reduce barriers to education, all our workshops are free to attend and, where possible, are run in partnership with local community/healthcare groups during their existing sessions with parents/caregivers – so, no extra time needed. To reach those who can’t attend a workshop, we’re helping passionate participants become clean air and climate action champions in their own communities. This includes providing them with resources to share onwards and, excitingly, creating short videos with them to amplify their trusted voice amongst their peers.
Enabling parents to share their lived experiences of local air quality, health, and our workshops in this way also helps us to get a sense of Clean Air, Strong Starts’ impact. Evaluating our project sees us complement these stories with statistics; we run a quick pre- and post-workshop quiz, understanding what participating parents know already about air quality, climate change, and health, before measuring any changes in their knowledge.
I can’t wait to share more about Clean Air, Strong Starts as the project progresses. If you’d like to find out more, or if you’re local and want to celebrate Clean Air Day 2025 with us by coming along to one of our workshops, I’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch by emailing [email protected]
