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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Jake L. Pauls, BArch, CPE, Jake Pauls Consulting Services, 12507 Winexburg Manor Drive, Suite 201, Silver Spring, MD 20906, 301-933-5275, bldguse@aol.com

The presentation reviews the relatively potent influence, on the built environment, of the enforcement of up-to-date requirements for design, construction, maintenance and use of the built environment. For a decade APHA has been represented on the International Code Council (ICC) Industry Advisory Committee (IAC) which provides guidance on policies and model code development procedures ultimately affecting health and safety of the built environment through widely adopted and enforced model building, plumbing, fire and other codes in the USA. For five years, there has been even more intensive APHA representation on nine committees of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a developer of hundreds of ANSI standards, many influencing health and safety of the built environment in the USA and elsewhere, for example with NFPA's internationally used Life Safety Code. During the years of APHA representation on committees of ICC and NFPA, two major, new model building codes have been produced, published and republished on three-year cycles. With the beginning in 2006 of a new cycle of code development for key NFPA and ICC model building codes (and other model documents), it is timely to assess the effectiveness of having APHA represented on ten committees largely responsible for technical and policy quality of these documents. Also underlining the importance of such an assessment are impending professional changes by the principal APHA representative (the author) on the NFPA and ICC committees plus the need to better incorporate such representation in the growth of the Built Environment Institute in APHA.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Identify the two key US-based organizations and the model codes they produce that impact health and safety in the built environment.
• Understand how APHA representation on these organizations’ committees has influenced their policies and products during the last decade plus their impact on health and safety in the built environment.
• Influence, and make informed decisions on, APHA’s future role with such model codes as well as their own professional activities in the development, adoption and enforcement of such codes as part of a comprehensive approach to public health as influenced by the built environment.

Keywords: Environmental Health, Injury Control

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered

Handout (.pdf format, 2127.2 kb)