Oral

Stakeholder engagement is recognized as a cornerstone of public health. Engaging stakeholders can be especially important to environmental public health, and more specifically, for chemical assessment, risk assessment, and risk management (i.e., decision making). With tens of thousands of different chemicals in commerce, everyone encounters chemicals every day – so nearly everyone has a stake in ensuring that chemicals are manufactured, used, and disposed of in ways that are safe for all. Chemicals are also essential to most industries in the United States and around the world, translating into billions of dollars for the global economy. Industries affected by chemical assessment and management have historically been very engaged stakeholders in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) programs and actions. State and local governments also play important roles as stakeholders due to their responsibilities in managing chemical risks at the local level. Over the years, non-profit organizations and community groups have organized around issues of chemical assessment and management, in efforts to reduce and or eliminate known local hazards. In 2009, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum emphasizing the need for transparency, public participation, and collaboration in Federal government programs and activities. This session will explore examples for stakeholder and community engagement in chemical risk assessment and management at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and include a perspective from a non-governmental organization working to protect public health. In particular, the speakers will describe several assessment and regulatory programs, outline the processes used by these programs for engaging stakeholders, emphasize key decisions points where stakeholder engagement and input is important in the processes, explain why this type of engagement is important for these programs and for environmental public health, and in some cases, describe new initiatives to further enhance stakeholder engagement efforts in the various processes.

Session Objectives: 1. Describe why stakeholder engagement is important for environmental public health. 2. Explain the process established for stakeholders to become involved in various EPA activities and identify decision points in the processes for stakeholder and public participation. 3. Describe recommendations from the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures related to public/stakeholder engagement.