Environmental Health - Food and Waterborne Illness Surveillance Investigations

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Changing patterns of individual and global economic behavior have complicated the public health control of food and waterborne diseases in recent years and have accentuated the need for an improved public health infrastructure to detect illness.

This program is designed to address tasks at the county, regional and state levels. The counties themselves maintain food and waterborne illness complaint logs and perform outbreak investigations with an epidemiological team composed of an environmental health professional, a nurse and an epidemiologist. Regional epidemiologists also play a role in helping to train county health department staff in a variety of aspects of outbreak investigations. In addition to the knowledge and experience the regional epidemiologists bring to the program, they provide technical assistance in outbreak investigations and report writing along with assistance in questionnaire development and statistical analysis.

Environmental Health, together with its team of regional food/waterborne illness epidemiologists and health department staff, are responsible for investigating illness outbreaks associated with food and water consumption and recreational water use.