TABLE 2
Core and Secondary Environmental Public Health Program Seasonality of Duty Performance ( n = 518)
Program
Duties Performed All Year
Duties Performed Only Seasonally
Overall Total
#
%
#
%
#
%
Core program
Food safety/food protection
390 284 255 272 223 262 251 223 216 192 184 145 146 136
96 73 72 87 71 90 89 80 95 86 88 73 83 88 64
17
4
407 390 354 314 315 290 283 279 227 223 209 199 176 155
79 75 68 61 61 56 55 54 44 43 40 38 34 30 19
Emergency preparedness (includes on an as-needed basis)
106
27 28 13 29 10 11 20
Swimming pools/recreational water safety
99 42 92 28 32 56 11 31 25 54 30 19 35
Potable water
Zoonoses, vectors, pests (vector control)
Onsite wastewater
Non-school institutions and licensed establishments
School safety and inspection
Body art
5
Early childcare/daycare
14 12
Lead prevention
Secondary program
Indoor air quality and radon
27 17 12 36
Hazardous materials
Healthy homes
Climate
63
98
and in which core EPH programs they have duties. Respondents received only survey questions about the programs in which they performed duties either all year or season- ally. Program-specific questions were used to inform recommendations that outline the core functions of each program. Consistent questions were used as stratifying character- istics to evaluate agreement between groups of the EPH workforce. Respondents who indicated working at a state or federal level were excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, local governmental EPH work can be housed within dierent organi- zational levels across jurisdictions and agen- cies, including within departments of health; departments of agriculture; and bureaus, divisions, and branches. While we recognize this fact, we will refer to the agencies per- forming EPH work as departments through- out this article. Sta and other positions were combined into a single category referred to as sta. These other positions include EPH consultants, retirees, data scientists, oce and support
sta, academics, and subject matter experts. Manager-level positions, combined into the category of managers, included a current posi- tion level of supervisor, manager, director, or chief. Due to a low number of respondents, sta workload reasonableness results excluded responses from respondents who indicated working part-time. Without the ability to com- pare sta workloads between full- and part- time EPH professionals, conclusions about workload reasonableness could be made only about full-time workloads. Stang workload time units (i.e., activi- ties per field day or activities per field week) depended on the seasonality or number of sites. The unit of activities per day was asked for programs where the bulk of the work was performed during operational periods, typically less than 12 months, or for pro- grams where more granularity was needed (i.e., food safety). The condensed season of operation means sta might perform work in these programs (e.g., swimming pools/recre- ational water programs) exclusively or for the majority of their working time. Therefore, the
workload averaged by day could be a more accurate measure of stang workload for sea- sonal programs. Recommendations were made from these survey questions in field days or weeks due to the various responsibilities associated with programs, aside from inspections. EPH professionals generally are not expected to be in the field 40 hours a week, nor should they solely conduct field inspections without performing other programmatic and admin- istrative duties associated with the program. For example, additional food safety program duties include plan reviews, complaint and outbreak investigations, enforcement actions, trainings, and attending meetings.
Results
Demographics Overall, 523 respondents submitted survey responses about their local governmental EPH department (Table 1). Most respon- dents worked at a county level (59%), fol- lowed by 13% at the district level, 11% at
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July/August 2025 • Journal of Environmental Health
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