Environmental Health Capacity Projects

Key points

Learn about what Environmental Health Capacity (EHC) program recipients are working on and the type of projects they can choose.

People around a table with data and charts.

Building core capacity to use EH data

All EHC recipients have projects on using environmental health (EH) data. These build capacity to use existing data or to collect new EH data with a focus on

  • Identifying, characterizing, and mitigating EH hazards.
  • Evaluating the effectiveness and impact of EH interventions.

Recipient activities can include

  • Gathering data for identifying environmental health (EH) hazards.
  • Improving or updating information system hardware and software.
  • Training staff on informatics, data analysis, and data visualization.
  • Building or strengthening partnerships to share EH data.
  • Creating processes to use EH data in decisions about programs and services.

Strengthening EH programs and services

Recipient projects focus on

  • Improving access to safe drinking water through interventions for private wells and small community water systems.
  • Developing programs to prevent hazards and harmful exposures in treatedA and untreatedB recreational water.

Recipient projects can strengthen the capacity of additional EH program and service areas. New projects added during the cooperative agreement can include safe water management plans, rodent control, food safety, exposure assessments, outbreak investigations, and the range of EH programs identified by the UNCOVER EH practice and workforce assessment.

Enhancing capacity to address EH hazards and issues

These projects focus on

  • Supporting EH response, recovery, and mitigation for covered disasters or emergencies.C
  • Using electronic health record data to identify unusual occurrence of pediatric cancer and potential environmental exposures.
  • Assessing environment-related mitigation strategy implementation in communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Recipients have the opportunity to add new projects over the course of the 5-year cooperative agreement. Potential project areas include harmful algal blooms, plumbing hazards in building hot and cold water piping systems, extreme weather events, EH issues related to homelessness, and others.

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Content Source:
National Center for Environmental Health
  1. Treated recreational water facilities include venues like swimming pools, spas, water parks, and spray fountains.
  2. Untreated waters include those designated for recreational use and managed by EH service programs, such as marine, estuarine, Great Lakes, inland waters, etc.
  3. Covered emergencies and disasters include the consequences of Hurricanes Florence and Michael, Typhoon Mangkhut, Super Typhoon Yutu; wildfires and earthquakes occurring in calendar year 2018; and tornadoes and floods occurring in calendar year 2019.