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- developing a supportive infrastructure for the project by establishing an advisory body (the Environmental Health Partnership Group);
- conducting an environmental public health specialists’ needs assessment;
- designing and implementing a community skills training curriculum for environmental public health specialists to include a train-the-trainer format;
- launching PACE EH projects in 10 target communities across Alabama; and
- conducting the PACE EH research agenda.
- a detailed report on the environmental public health specialists’ needs assessment;
- eight curriculum modules for a 4-day training program; and
- a training video on PACE EH.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: H. KENNETH DILLON, PhD
Program Description
This project is a partnership between the Alabama Department of
Public Health (ADPH) and the School of Public Health at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Other partners
include 10 practicing environmental public health specialists
located throughout the state. These specialists participated in
the field testing of a new community-practice environmental
health curriculum. The primary focus of this project is to
promote understanding of the human dimension of environmental
health practice to facilitate the active participation of
community members in environmental health programs and services.
Project activities occur in three track areas: expanding support
for environmental health at the state level; increasing
environmental health practitioners’ community knowledge and
practice skills; and evaluating the extent to which the Protocol
for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health
(PACE EH) methodology and tasks can be implemented in
resource-poor communities.
Goals and Objectives
Goals of this project include the following:
Products and Outcomes
Products developed to date include the following:
Other products will include a manuscript for publication summarizing the needs assessment findings; a train-the-trainer curriculum (based on the field-tested curriculum); and several tools for use by environmental public health specialists in their efforts to complete the first five tasks of PACE EH.
Impact to the Community
A community of excellence in environmental health is one in
which environmental health practitioners use their professional
talents and skills in the context of nationally promoted core
functions and competencies for environmental health programs. A
level of excellence is reached when these practitioners mix
their talents and skills with the active and sustained
involvement of community laypersons, agency personnel, and
leaders to advance community-specific approaches to identifying,
solving, and anticipating environmental health problems and
threats.
Feedback from Customers
Participants in the training curriculum have shown excitement
about and enthusiasm for the project. Additional feedback will
be obtained when participants begin their work to implement
PACE EH activities. This feedback will include participants’
assessments of the applicability of PACE EH tasks in their
target communities and evaluation of their efforts to engage
community members in environmental health activities.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30333, U.S.A
CDC Contact Center: 800-CDC-INFO • 888-232-6348 (TTY)
