California Envirnomental Health Specialist Network

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Description (provided by Applicant): The objective of EHS-Net is to assist State health departments in improving the delivery of environmental health program services by strengthening the ability of State and local environmental health programs and professionals to anticipate, identify, evaluate and respond to both intentional and unintentional contamination of the food and water supply. The mechanism to achieve this purpose is the establishment of a network of Environmental Health Specialists (EHS) who collaborate with environmental health program staff, communicable disease program staff, epidemiologists, and laboratorians at the State and local levels to identify and prevent environmental factors that contribute to food borne and waterborne illness and disease outbreaks. The California EHS-Net project will continue on-going research to identify environmental antecedents to foodborne illness at restaurants, and will expand the project to include drinking water safety as well as other aspects of food safety. In addition, the California EHS-Net project will collaborate with other EHS-Net states to develop special research studies. Environmental health and communicable disease staff in the participating Counties (indicated in "Performance Sites" below) will assist with these research projects, including the methodology for data collection, the collection and analysis of the data, and the publication of the study results. The California EHS-Net project will be utilized to achieve the following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Environmental Health objective: "increase the capacity of state and local health departments to deliver environmental health services in the community." To fulfill this objective, California will continue to build new and strengthen existing partnerships with environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, public health and infectious disease specialists, laboratory staff, public health educators, and allied professionals at the national, State, and local levels. These partnerships will enhance the ability of local agencies to conduct foodborne and waterborne outbreak investigations and environmental surveillance activities.