Introduction

In May of 2000 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) published the Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE-EH).  This publication provides a methodology for local public health officials to conduct community-based environmental health assessments through facilitating communication among local partners, identifying and prioritizing local environmental health issues, and developing locally appropriate plans to address local priority issues.  PACE-EH is intended to be a tool to engage communities in the process of identifying locally important environmental health issues and develop local strategies to address those priority issues based upon the availability of resources including those of the community.

From September 2002 until the present, Island County Public Health (ICPH) has been using the PACE-EH model to demonstrate the effectiveness of community collaboration to enhance the capacity of environmental health programs within Island County.  The opportunity to conduct a comprehensive community-based environmental health assessment using the PACE-EH model has been supported by a Cooperative Agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Grant #U50/CCU024319-03) entitled “Delivering Environmental Health Services”.  The specific project is entitled the “Island County Environmental Health Initiative” (ICEHI). Through this process, ICPH has successfully established an environmental health advisory group who in turn has conducted a systematic environmental health assessment, identified locally appropriate environmental health issues, developed local action plans to address the priority issues, and is actively implementing these plans.  The successes that have been attained through this process serve as an example for other communities to pursue implementation of the PACE-EH model in their communities.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this project is to offer ideas, models, tools and work products to other environmental health practitioners to simplify the process of PACE-EH in their communities.  The resource investment requirements for operationalizing PACE-EH are significant; as such, any insight into how other communities have accomplished the tasks of the process can reduce significant amounts of time, energy and resources for other communities embarking on the process.  PACE-EH was designed to provide a flexible and adaptable model for mobilizing community support and engaging communities in models of change.  Therefore, the ideas, models, tools and work products provided in this toolkit are not meant to be prescriptive, rather, one option to proceed through each step of the process. 

For the user, the toolkit addresses each task of the PACE-EH process separately.  For each step of PACE the toolkit provides: 1) a description of how that particular task was completed in Island County, 2) a selection of ideas, models and work products in PDF and MS format, and 3) a list of valuable resources to review for additional insight or ideas.

This toolkit is not designed to share the significant capacity that the PACE-EH model can bring to a community.  Those capacities and outcomes are unique to each community based upon local priorities, resources and ideals.  For more information concerning the outcomes of the ICEHI see http://www.islandcounty.net/health/EHAT/ourtopissues.htm.

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