Vector Control Att G

Direct from CDC
Environmental Health
Services Branch
CAPT John P. Sarisky, R.S., M.P.H.

The Environmental Public Health
Performance Standards: Strengthening
the Nation’s Environmental Public
Health Infrastructure and Improving
Environmental Health Practice
Editor’s note: NEHA strives to provide
up-to-date and relevant information on
environmental health and to build part­
nerships in the profession. In pursuit of
these goals, we feature a column from the
Environmental Health Services Branch
(EHSB) of the Centers for Disease Con­
trol and Prevention (CDC) in every issue
of the Journal.
In this column, EHSB and guest au­
thors from across CDC will highlight a
variety of concerns, opportunities, chal­
lenges, and successes that we all share
in environmental public health. EHSB’s
objective is to strengthen the role of state,
local, and national environmental health
programs and professionals to anticipate,
identify, and respond to adverse environ­
mental exposures and the consequences
of these exposures for human health. The
services being developed through EHSB
include access to topical, relevant, and
scientific information; consultation; and
assistance to environmental health spe­
cialists, sanitarians, and environmental
health professionals and practitioners.
The conclusions in this article are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily rep­
resent the views of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
John Sarisky is a senior environmental
health officer in the Environmental Health
Services Branch. He is also the coordina­
tor for CDC’s Environmental Public Health
Leadership Institute.

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Volume 71 • Number 10

T

he National Center for Environmental
Health (NCEH) at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
works with many partners to strengthen the
nation’s public health infrastructure and to im­
prove environmental public health practice.
CDC is committed to supporting, adopt­
ing, and using National Public Health Per­
formance Standards (NPHPS). In keeping
with this commitment and to complement
NPHPS, NCEH has developed draft Environ­
mental Public Health Performance Standards
(EnvPHPS).
In 2006, NCEH and its partners began work­
ing on EnvPHPS, available at http://www.cdc.
gov/nceh/ehs/EnvPHPS. These standards are
a companion module to the National Public
Health Performance Standards (NPHPS), avail­
able at http://www.cdc.gov/od/ocphp/nphpsp/.
Nationwide implementation of EnvPHPS at the
state, tribal, and local levels will help NCEH
build capacity, consistency, and accountability
within and across the nation’s environmental
public health systems. Among other things, the
standards are intended to describe more clearly
what every program needs to do to perform op­
timally the 10 essential services of environmen­
tal public health.
CDC developed EnvPHPS nationally, in
cooperation with key public health partner
groups. Thus, the standards have a level of
credibility that makes a strong argument for
improving environmental public health prac­
tice. Others have recognized for their leader­
ship those departments that have adopted the
standards—and many if not all of those de­
partments have shown measureable environ­
mental health practice improvements. And

because the EnvPHPS were developed from
a perspective of broad, systematic environ­
mental health practice, the standards can be
applied to virtually all environmental health
and protection programs whether or not
those programs reside in health departments.

EnvPHPS and NPHPS
The EnvPHPS align with the familiar NPHPS
format. Using both instruments can assist in
building understanding and teamwork be­
tween environmental health and other public
health programs. In fact, the EnvPHPS can
be used separately from or concurrently with
the NPHPS to do the following.
• Assess the capacity of a state, tribal, or local
jurisdiction to perform essential environ­
mental health services; EnvPHPS is applica­
ble at the program, agency, or system level.
• Identify and prioritize gaps in an environ­
mental health system that inhibit or pre­
vent that system from performing the 10
essential environmental health services.
• Develop an action plan to address identi­
fied gaps and address any other barriers to
meeting the standards.
• Educate and train new and existing staff,
other public health officials, policy mak­
ers, and elected officials about how envi­
ronmental health can prevent disease and
reduce hazards.
• Provide credible evidence to demonstrate
the value of environmental health service
programs and to justify the need for addi­
tional resources.
• Measure improvement in a system’s capacity
to deliver essential environmental health
services.
Reprinted with permission from NEHA

EnvPHPS Status
A free, online continuing education course
related to the standards is available through
NEHA. The course can provide continuing
education credit for environmental health
practitioners and students and is available at
http://www.nehacert.org/joomlaupg/index.
php; click on CDC-Sponsored Workshops.
This summer, NCEH expects to release
the EnvPHPS and begin analysis and report­
ing of submitted self-assessment data. NCEH
encourages all environmental health jurisdic­
tions to become familiar with these new stan­
dards and to promote their use actively.

EnvPHPS Data Use
NCEH will use information gathered via
the EnvPHPS to identify the greatest envi­
ronmental public health needs and match
resources to those needs. This continuous
process of identifying service gaps and focus­
ing resources on them will strengthen the na­
tion’s environmental public health infrastruc­
ture. NCEH will use compiled capacity data
from the self-assessment process to build an
accurate picture of the challenges facing the
nation’s environmental public health services
delivery systems. The data collection will
also provide information to Congress and
to federal, tribal, state, and local agencies;
to foundations; and to universities regard­
ing where best to focus resources for perfor­
mance improvement.
Visit the EnvPHPS Web site at (http://www.
cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/EnvPHPS) to download and
use the draft standards, and to access online
resources, including the free online training
offered by NEHA with CDC support. Link to
the NPHPS to obtain more information about
how the EnvPHPS were developed.
The EnvPHPS Web site will also include
• a tool kit,
• data entry and reporting capabilities for
users, and
• an evaluation component to assess the ef­
fectiveness of the tool in improving capac­
ity, the environment, and public health.
For additional information on EnvPHPS,
e-mail [email protected].
Corresponding Author: John Sarisky, Environ­
mental Health Services Branch, Division of
Emergency and Environmental Health Servic­
es, National Center for Environmental Health,
CDC, 4770 Buford Highway, N.E., M.S. F-60,
Atlanta, GA 30341. E-mail: [email protected].
Reprinted with permission from NEHA

June 2009 • Journal of Environmental Health

21