Franklin County Public Health practice-based research to identify and prevent environmental risk factors contributing to foodborne illness

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

PROJECT SUMMARY Franklin County Public Health (FCPH) seeks to advance the field of retail food safety by becoming an active member of the Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net). FCPH intends to conduct practice-based research that will support the National Prevention Strategy Strategic Priority of Healthy Eating and the Healthy People 2020 Food Safety Objectives by increasing food safety and reducing risk factors for foodborne illnesses. Specifically, FCPH aims to build on previous EHS-Net findings and study how certified kitchen managers (CKMs) may impact five major risk factors that contribute to outbreaks of foodborne illness: A) Improper holding time and temperature, B) Contaminated utensils and equipment, C) Improper cooking, D) Poor employee hygiene, and E) Food obtained from unsafe sources. Initial work will evaluate the relationship between the presence of a CKM and violations in these five areas during inspections, and consider other factors such as inspector bias and type of training completed by the CKM to achieve certification. Multisite projects could identify how the CKM certification or training processes differ across the EHS-Net and evaluate how these differences might impact retail food safety. Results from these efforts would help describe the relationships between CKMs and risk factors for foodborne illness, and could be used to justify changes to CKM requirements in the Food Code. FCPH has created a cross-cutting team of environmental health and epidemiology staff to conduct the proposed research activities. This team is committed to collaborating with the EHS-Net on other research projects that may improve the retail food safety environment.