YOUR ASSOCIATION
NEHA NEWS
Do You Use Data? We Want to Hear From You! We are working to understand the current landscape of the infor- matics infrastructure of environmental public health data across environmental health programs at state, territorial, local, and tribal jurisdictions nationwide. Our goal is to identify gaps and opportu- nities in data and informatics infrastructure to provide resources and support toward creating a more reliable, eective, sustainable, and standardized national data system. The assessment will collect information about environmental public health, including: • Information systems currently in use • Data fields collected and how data are collected, stored, and used • Contributing factors to successful information systems • Programs that prioritize data and informatics We understand that collecting and using data often requires a cross-disciplinary team of professionals—environmental health, IT, leadership, and beyond. Please share our request for input with those professionals in your jurisdiction who contribute to your environmental public health data and informatics infrastructure, including leadership and sta who collect, clean, store, and ana- lyze the data. We thank you in advance for your support and look forward to sharing our results. Learn more and take the survey at www.neha.org/informatics- assessment. Retail Food Safety Regulatory Workforce Standardization Survey We are working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to understand the standardization processes used by retail food regu- latory programs across the country at state, local, tribal, and terri- torial levels. We ask leaders in the retail food regulatory workforce to complete the Retail Food Regulatory Workforce Standardization Survey. The purpose of this survey is to: • Identify and understand food safety standardization practices being used throughout the country to inform the FDA standard- ization process. • Determine the degree of exposure retail food regulatory profes- sionals have to key content knowledge areas. • Discover strengths and gaps between exposure to content and the working needs of the regulatory community. If you lead standardization for your regulatory retail food safety program, please complete our short survey at https://surveys. neha.org/standardization/selfsurvey. This survey is funded by the NEHA-FDA Retail Flexible Funding Model Grant Program and supported by FDA under award U2FFD007358. The survey analysis will be made available to the retail food safety regulatory workforce to provide a comprehensive overview of the accepted training and standardization practices nationwide.
The results of the survey have the potential to impact decisions on the FDA retail standardization process moving forward. For questions, email us at retaildata@neha.org. You can also learn more at www.neha.org/retail-grants-standardization-survey.
Save the Date for Our 2024 Congressional Hill Day
Photo courtesy of Doug Farquhar. Congressional Hill Day is our opportunity to introduce and enlighten U.S. Congress members, from both the House of Represen- tatives and Senate, about environ- mental health in their state, how environmental health aects their constituents, and ways to improve federal environmental health ser- vices to state and local communi- ties. For our 2024 Congressional Hill Day, we will be traveling to Washington, DC, on March 27–28, 2024, to meet with federal legislators. In the context of national politics, these visits are essential to any association promoting their profession. Congress pays atten- tion to those groups that actively promote their profession and supports funding for federal agencies and activities that provide for their profession. Congress needs to hear and know that these eorts have an impact on their constituents and communities. Visit www.neha.org/hill-day to learn more. Registration is required for the event and is limited to 25 attendees. The 2024 InFORM Conference Is Next Month! The 2024 Integrated Foodborne Outbreak Response and Man- agement (InFORM) Conference will take place on January 22–24, 2024, in Washington, DC. InFORM brings together the network of public health o¢cials involved with foodborne and enteric disease outbreak response. This network includes cur- rent federal, state, and local public health and environmental health specialists, epidemiologists, health communicators, and laboratory scientists. The InFORM conference celebrates the robust network of pub- lic health o¢cials who are connected by cause, driven by data, and empowered by collaboration. If you are currently a public health o¢cial who works in foodborne and enteric diseases, please consider joining us for the first in-person InFORM Con- ference since 2017. While early bird registration ends on December 1, you can still register for the InFORM conference after that date. For more details on the 2024 InFORM Conference and to register, visit www. neha.org/inform.
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Volume 86 • Number 5
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