Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net): A basis for understanding environmental antecedents and contributing factors to outbreaks

Much has been done by food safety program managers to improve their hazard surveillance activities but they do not have the information on environmental antecedents and contributing factors from foodborne outbreak investigations necessary to continually improve hazard surveillance or to develop other food safety actions to prevent foodborne illness outbreaks. A national voluntary environmental assessment information system (NVEAIS) could provide food safety program managers with an information resource that could fill this gap.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Health Specialists Network (EHS-Net), through its experience in conducting environmental assessments in foodborne outbreaks and reporting the results to CDC as part of its Foodborne Outbreak Study, provides a model for such an information system. To begin a national dialogue on the establishment of a NVEAIS the Conference for Food Protection, in 2008, formed a committee to explore the establishment of such a system.

EHS-Net, organized in 2000, is a collaborative program that includes, nine states, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and industry representatives. The nine states include California, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, New York, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. The network consists of environmental health professionals, epidemiologists and laboratorians who work to understand environmental causes of food and waterborne diseases and to improve environmental public health practice.