The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #67633

Mike Hughes, RESOLVE, 600 17th Street #2800 South, Denver, CO 80202, 303-861-1500, mhughes@resolv.org and Susan J. Hewitt, MS, Health District of Northern Larimer County, 120 Bristlecone Drive, Fort Collins, CO 80524.

The City Council of Fort Collins, Colorado, in response to public questions about the risks of drinking water fluoridation, created the Fluoride Technical Study Group and charged the group with examining the best science available and presenting a synopsis of their findings to the County Health Board, City Water Board, and, ultimately the Council. The City staff integrated the study group into a public process that will yield recommendations from the two boards and a City Council decision about continuing, discontinuing or altering its drinking water fluoridation program. In a community that prides itself on civic engagement, changing a part of the public health system requires taking on a substantial public process. The more controversial the topic and the more dedicated the activists, the more elaborate that process will become. This presentation and discussion are intended to assist public health professionals handle a set of circumstances for which most have not been formally trained. We will present a consensus-building process and place it in the context of a larger public involvement and agency coordination program. We will give the details of an extensive search for credible scientific work and show how science, fear, politics and media work together and, sometimes, work at cross purposes. Finally, the presentation will include the consensus findings developed by the Fluoride Technical Study Group and an explanation of the steps required to produce this document. The question and answer period will help the participants apply Fort Collins' consensus-building effort to their own communities.

Learning Objectives:

• In this session, the participants will:
• 1. Learn one approach to public participation that integrates scientific analysis, public meetings, stakeholder negotiation, media relations and policy formation.
• 2. Apply this approach to the public health controversies in their own communities.
• 3. Know how to construct an outline for a public process in their own community.
• 4. Receive a set of lessons (lessons we learned the hard way) that if applied can prevent, or at least reduce, the difficulty in making public policy decisions about highly controversial health topics.

Keywords: Community Participation, Public Policy

Related Web page: fcgov.com

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.