Recommendations for improving the environmental public health system: Results from a gap analysis

The national Environmental Public Health Performance Standards (EnvPHPS) were developed to build environmental public health capacity, consistency, and accountability in performing the essential services of environmental health. The second version of the EnvPHPS have been used in a series of workshops the last two years to introduce the standards to interested jusrisdictions. Sevety-one participants of the workshops completed the EnvPHPS instrument. Information from the participants was summarized to identify gaps in the capacity of the collective participants to perform the essential services of environmental health.The major gaps indicated in the preliminary data analysis include the capacity to monitor environmental and health status to identify and solve community environmental health problems as well as the capacity to evaluate the effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population based environmental health services. A description of the contributing factors to these gaps and recommendations for improvement will be discussed.