Environmental public health performance standards as a key CDC strategy to strengthen the nation's environmental public health infrastructure

The purpose of this paper is to familiarize participants with the draft CDC national Environmental Public Health Performance Standards, a companion module to the National Public Health Performance Standards. This new tool, developed by the CDC with the input of organizations and agencies throughout the country, will assist environmental health agencies in building capacity in environmental health, and will improve agency consistency and accountability across the nation. The Standards help agencies to measure the capability of environmental health programs to perform the essential services of environmental health, to identify needed changes to enhance capacity, and to measure improvement. The process also helps agencies prepare for the advent of accreditation. The speaker will provide information on the status of these new draft standards and how they help to fulfill the CDC's vision and strategy of revitalizing and realizing a strong national environmental public health infrastructure.