Last week, KID traveled to Orlando for the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization’s (ICPHSO) Annual Meeting and Training Symposium. The event brings together many different product safety stakeholders including manufacturers, retailers, consumer advocates, labs, regulators and those that work with them such as attorneys and consultants to discuss current product safety issues and how we can improve safety.

At one of the first sessions, Nancy and Dev announced the release of four new masterclass courses as part of the KID Design Safety Toolkit. The four new courses take a deeper dive into how to create and design products more safely in Sleep, At Home, Play and Out & About categories. KID also had an exhibit booth throughout the week to share the Toolkit. Learn more about it and sign up here.

We met with fellow consumer advocates throughout the week from Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Reports, Safe Kids Worldwide, Charlie’s House, Reese’s Purpose, Parents for Window Blind Safety, and That Water Bead Lady. We don’t see each other in person very often, so we were able to update each other on our work and discuss strategies for partnership.

Nancy spoke on a panel titled Protecting Consumers in an Expanding Secondhand Market alongside James Andrews of Meta and Jen Sultan of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and moderated by Tracey Kelly of IKEA. The panelists discussed ideas to get recalled and unsafe products off online sites. KID routinely finds recalled products for sale on platforms – even products recalled in the 90s!

Dev led a roundtable discussion at ICPHSO’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) session, talking about how companies and CPSC can better incorporate DEI and accessibility into their recalls and other forms of communication with consumers. The group talked about distributing recall notifications in Spanish, and for companies to utilize non-tech methods of getting recall information to consumers such as working with local community groups in underserved areas, and offering adequate recall remedies such as a full refund and for companies to pick up recalled products from consumers’ homes so they don’t have to travel to a store or mail the product.

KID is proud to be a much-needed voice and advocate for children and consumers at ICPHSO and we look forward to build relationships with other stakeholders to further children’s product safety.