In the year 2024, NACCHO’s Environmental Health team successfully executed contracts worth more than $2M in service of local health departments (LHDs) across the portfolios of climate change, vector control, water quality, sanitation, and hygiene, aquatic health and safety, and food safety. We released more than 60 publications designed to help LHDs advance essential environmental public health functions such as readying the rural workforce for climate and health work, regulating Mobile Food Units, and adopting Model Aquatic Health Code in local jurisdictions. Our EH staff assisted LHDs with travel scholarships totaling $95,000+ to help them reach conferences, share model practices, and attend trainings throughout the continental U.S. Staff were also instrumental in facilitating mentorship programs, workgroup meetings, and community of practices for hundreds of members.
Download the infographic here.
A Few Programmatic Highlights from 2024
The 2024 Vector Control Hurricane Crisis Workshop was held from April 22 - April 25, 2024. The Workshop brought together 65 individual attendees including subject matter experts at the federal and state level; academia; private companies; local health departments; public works departments; and mosquito abatement districts to help low-resource, hurricane-impacted jurisdictions detect, prevent, prepare for, and respond to, mosquito-borne diseases. The workshop received overwhelmingly positive feedback, with attendees praising the informative sessions on vector control, especially in relation to hurricane season preparedness.
I came to this workshop with zero knowledge of vector control. I did not realize what an important component it is for the hurricane season. Great information provided!
– Testimonial from a vector workshop attendee
In honor of Food Safety Education Month, we launched a mini-podcast series through NACCHO’s Podcast from Washington where EH staff showcased stories from local jurisdictions highlighting their innovative work to improve food safety in their communities. The episodes were welcomed by LHDs working in this field with ~800 views of the episodes so far. Listen to all episodes here.
In 2023, the EH team, with support from the Research and Evaluation team at NACCHO, surveyed a sample of LHDs across the country to better understand the scope and frequency of climate-related public health activities at the local level. The 2024 Are We Ready? report suggested an urgent need to invest in a climate-ready public health system—with lack of funding and absence of trained staff dedicated to climate change emerging as some of the key barriers to building such infrastructure. In response to these needs, the team released a suite of resources aimed at strengthening the climate and health rural workforce and building a robust climate and health system through four scalable models adapted to LHD needs. Access the resources at naccho.org/climate-change.
NACCHO is committed to supporting local health departments in their development of wastewater surveillance (WWS) programs. This ever-growing program has garnered high interest and engagement from LHDs, establishing the important utility of WWS as an inclusive, non-invasive, and cost-efficient tool that can detect infectious diseases circulating in a community. The 2024 Mentorship Program has had over $62,000 in funding distributed to six local health departments over three HHS regions; an average of 42 staff hours of technical assistance received by mentees including monthly calls with NACCHO, mentors, and site-visits, conferences, and other meetings; and five in-person learning opportunities (workshops, conferences and site-visits). In addition, fourteen new resources were added to our expanding WWS Resource Library.
This is a great program for awareness and to kickstart surveillance for agencies. I hope you continue it and that many other agencies fill your upcoming cohorts! NACCHO has great grant programs which have led our agency to great opportunities. I appreciate working with you every time!
– Testimonial from a Wastewater Surveillance Mentorship Program participant
Download our program factsheet here to view all of our resources and key accomplishments!
