Evaluating local and state food and water safety programs.

L ocal and state food and water safety programs are on the frontline of food and waterborne illness prevention. Yet in the current economic climate, some of these public health programs are being re­ duced or eliminated. Data that show the im­ pact of these programs on public health are crucial to policy makers faced with difficult choices that may affect the health of the com­ munities they serve. The Environmental Health Specialists Net­ work (EHS-Net) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Center for Environmental Health is planning to conduct an evaluation of local and state food and water safety programs that will provide these needed data. EHS-Net consists of environ­ mental health professionals, epidemiologists, and laboratorians who work to understand environmental causes of food and waterborne diseases and to improve environmental public health practice. Food and/or water safety pro­ grams from California, Iowa, Minnesota, New York (including New York City), Rhode Island, and Tennessee participate in EHS-Net. The purpose of this evaluation is to • describe local and state food and water safety programs and their components, • describe how these programs are in­ fluenced by both internal and external factors (e.g., staffing, economics, politics, etc.), and • assess these programs’ impact on public health, to the extent possible. Some of the anticipated results of this evaluation include identification of services provided by food and water safety programs, a description of infrastructure and how it changes over time, identification of program strengths and gaps, assessment of future pro­ gram challenges, and measurement of the impact of public health interventions. Cur­ rent local and state EHS-Net programs will be participating in the evaluation. Non-EHS-Net programs will also be asked to participate to provide a comparison group that does not have the benefit of CDC funding for their food and/or water programs. The evaluation is expected to include a retrospective, cur­ rent, and prospective view of programs. CDC will publish findings over the course of the evaluation process. A review of environmental health evalua­ tion and program assessment tools revealed no existing tool fully met this project’s needs. Thus, CDC EHS-Net staff, with assistance from EHS-Net local and state program staff, developed a framework to guide the devel­ opment of evaluation tools. This framework