Our mission is to protect children from environmental health hazards through education and advocacy that create healthy homes, schools, and communities.
Improving Kids’ Environment (IKE), throughout its history, has been focused on advancing programs and public policies to reduce environmental threats to children’s health. IKE had been on the forefront of efforts to reduce risks to Hoosier kids from lead, pesticides, household chemicals, and raw sewage.
For its first twenty years, from May 1999 to October 2019, Improving Kids’ Environment (IKE) was an independent, statewide non-profit organization. It was led successively by Executive Directors Tom Neltner, Janet McCabe, Jodi Perras, Dolores Weis, and Margaret Frericks.
To sustain its vital mission, IKE — starting on Children’s Environmental Health Day (October 10, 2019) — became a part of the Hoosier Environmental Council (HEC) through a merger. The combined organization is led by Executive Director Sam Carpenter. IKE’s current top priorities are environmental triggers of asthma and reducing childhood lead poisoning.