ADVANCEMENT OF THE PRACTICE
Open Access
DIRECT FROM CDC ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Building National Capacity: Tools and Resources for the Environmental Health Professional
Raquel Sabogal, MSPH
Aja Fatou- Jagne, MPH
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
tices successfully applied in the field through CDC’s recently launched Environmental Pub- lic Health Practice Gateway (Figure 3).
Editor’s Note: The National Environmental Health Association strives to provide up-to-date and relevant information on environmental health and to build partnerships in the profession. In pursuit of these goals, we periodically feature columns on environmental health from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Journal . In these columns, authors from CDC’s Water, Food, and Environmental Health Services Branch, as well as guest authors, will share tools, resources, and guidance for environmental health practitioners. The conclusions in this column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of CDC. Raquel Sabogal is an epidemiologist and Aja Fatou-Jagne is a health scientist. They both work with the Water, Food, and Environmental Health Services Branch within the National Center for Environmental Health at CDC. Their work supports programs to build environmental health capacity and improve the practice of environmental health across the country.
Highlights of Partner Tools and Resources
Raising Awareness About Tickborne Diseases
The Kansas Department of Health and Envi- ronment and Kansas Environmental Health Tracking (n.d.) developed a data story to help communities understand and prevent tickborne diseases. This tool shares complex information with the public in an easy-to- understand format to help people minimize tick exposure, recognize tick species and iden- tify their locations within the state, and spot the signs and symptoms of tickborne illness. They provide case data reporting for ticks that transmit diseases like anaplasmosis, ehrlichio- sis, Lyme disease, spotted fever rickettsiosis, tularemia, and alpha-gal syndrome, which are prevalent in Midwestern states. Strengthening Private Well Protection Many partner tools and resources focus on private wells. These water systems lack federal regulatory oversight. Several EHC partners continue to collect drinking water data to build databases and create data dash- boards and interactive maps to help com- munities understand environmental health risk in private wells. For example, the Water Management Inventory Atlas from the Flor- ida Department of Health (2026) shows how interested parties can use private well data to support disaster preparedness, real estate transactions, county planning, and identi-
E nvironmental health professionals play a crucial role in protecting pub- lic health. A national assessment of the environmental health workforce found that many identify training gaps and limited access to tools and resources as key barriers to advancing their practice (Gerding et al., 2019). To strengthen environmental health programs nationwide, the National Center for Environmental Health within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2026) created the Environmental Health Ca- pacity (EHC) Program. Through this program, CDC funds 45 state, tribal, and local health departments (Figure 1). These partners focus on building capacity in priority areas such as drinking water from
private wells, recreational water, harmful algal blooms (HABs), food safety, exposure assess- ments, and outbreak investigations. Since 2020, EHC partners have used the funding to address their most pressing environmental health issues, developing a variety of publicly available tools and resources that strengthen environmental health services. Thus far, the partners have created 89 individual tools or resources on a variety of environmental health topics, including 18 websites and web- based tools, 35 databases and mapping tools, 31 written materials, 4 trainings and presen- tations, and 1 podcast (Figure 2). This column highlights several of these tools. Environmental health professionals can also find many of these tools and more prac-
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Volume 89 • Number 3
https://doi.org/10.70387/001c.171788
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