September is National Food Safety Month.
Explore resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partners on such topics as improving outbreak investigations, preventing outbreaks, and using the FDA Food Code.
What’s New With NACCHO
See How Our Free Toolbox Can Help Your Local Health Department: The Toolbox is a free online collection of public health tools for local health departments and other stakeholders such as business owners, food operators, and managers to advance their knowledge or gain skills. Click here to see which of the nearly 100 resources can help your health department advance food safety.
2022 FDA Retail Food Protection Seminar - Recordings and Stories from the Field: A dedicated website has been created to help attendees of the 2022 FDA Seminar access not only recordings, but information on FDA’s Retail Food Teams, stories from the field shared live by attendees, and more. Access the site at virtualcommunities.naccho.org/fdaretailfoodprotection2022/home.
Request for Applications: Food Safety Mentorship Program
From 2011–2021, our mentorship program provided peer-to-peer assistance and intensive technical support to help enforce the FDA’s Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards (VNRFRPS) efficiently and effectively. Experienced state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) retail food regulatory programs advised participating agencies on how to get started and best apply the VNRFRPS to improve their food protection programs. In 2022, NACCHO conducted a retrospective review to assess the effectiveness of the program in achieving these goals over the past decade. Click here to view our research findings.
Future iterations of the RPS Mentorship Program are being offered to SLTT agencies under the new Retail Flexible Funding Model (RFFM) from the National Environmental Health Association and the FDA.
The RFFM Grant portal is open to accept applications through 7:59 PM ET on Wednesday, October 11, 2023. New and existing grantees may apply for Calendar Year 2024 funding.
Click here to learn more and apply.
Seen the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response Toolkit Yet?
Created for public health practitioners to help implement the third edition of the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response, the Toolkit (cifor.us/products/toolkit) contains worksheets and keys to success designed to help agencies identify which recommendations work best for their jurisdictions. It is intended to:
help state and local health departments understand the Guidelines;
conduct a self-assessment of their outbreak detection and investigation procedures; and
implement appropriate recommendations from the third edition of the CIFOR Guidelines.
The Retail Food Regulatory Association Collaborative Highlights Their Work
The Collaborative brings together representatives such as the CDC, NACCHO, NEHA, the FDA, and others to help improve retail food safety in the United States. In the September issue of NEHA’s Journal of Environmental Health, the cover article, “A Collaborative Approach to National Food Code Adoption,” highlights the multipronged approach the Collaborative has undertaken to support national adoption of the FDA Food Code. Also included is a spotlight on some of the Collaborative’s tools and resources that drive food safety in a CDC column.
Learn more about the Collaborative at retailfoodsafetycollaborative.org.
