“Improving the nation's environmental health system: CDC's vision for the national Environmental Public Health Performance Standards (EnvPHPS)”

Implementation of the national Environmental Public Health Performance Standards (EnvPHPS) across the country at the state, tribal, and local levels, will help NCEH build capacity, consistency, and accountability within and across the nation's environmental public health system. The EnvPHPS will be the primary tool to consistently and continuously assess the nation's environmental public health capacity of a state, tribal, or local jurisdiction to perform the essential services of environmental public health and to identify gaps in this capacity. EnvPHPS can be applied at the program, agency, or system level. NCEH will use information gathered via the EnvPHPS to target resources to the greatest needs. This continuous process of identifying service gaps and focusing resources on these priorities will strengthen the nation's environmental public health infrastructure. NCEH will use compiled capacity data from the self-assessment process to build an accurate picture of the challenges facing the nation's environmental public health services delivery system. The data collection will also provide information to Congress; federal, tribal, state, and local agencies; foundations; and universities on where to best focus resources for performance improvement. Departments that have used the standards have been recognized externally for their leadership and have demonstrated improvements in environmental health practice. Because the EnvPHPS were developed with a perspective of the broad system of environmental health practice, the standards can be applied within virtually all environmental health and protection programs whether or not those programs reside in health departments.