PACE-EH_Escambia1006

Print This Page

EH Home

About Us

Communities

Radiation

Medicine

Water

Sewage

Programs

Newsroom

Data

PACE EH (Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health)

For more information on this project, contact Robert Merritt, Environmental Health Director, or Mary Beverly, PACE EH Coordinator at the Escambia County Health Department. All pdfs open in a new window.

ESCAMBIA COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT
October PACE EH Project Update

1. Project Summary

We had our third PACE-EH meeting at the Retirement Village this past Monday night, October 30th. We had 17 people in attendance and it was a success. The total number of attendees? (residents and govt.) dropped from the last two meetings; however, the good thing is, the number of residents went up.
We are still having lack of neighborhood participation. This has been a problem as we haven't had more than 10 residents come to the meetings. We have only received about 25 surveys out of about 75 residences.
We are working diligently with the neighborhood representatives that attend the meetings to discuss options that will increase neighborhood participation. We have created our CEHAT that will assist us in increasing the neighborhood resident?s participation with this project.
We had a meeting with Escambia County Engineering on October 12th to discuss a possible collaboration between the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority and County Engineering. The idea is to see if storm water drainage and road work could be ?piggy backed? with a proposed new sewer project in the Kupfrian Park Neighborhood. The Community Redevelopment Agency indicated that they may also be able to work collaboratively on street lights and sidewalks. Everything depends on the county budgeting, and prioritization. Sharing resources is the key to make the project(s) work.
We know that several residents would qualify for financial assistance and this financial assistance would pay for the cost of connecting their house to the proposed sewer project. We will work with the CEHAT to get more residents to attend the meetings so that we can start a pre-qualification process for all interested.
If the sewer project does not work out, we will continue with the drainage project, sidewalks and streetlights and will possibly replace old and failing septic tanks.
Our plan is to write an article for the news paper prior to the next meeting.

2. Work Plan and Process Update

PACE-EH Tasks	Action	Outcome	Target Date
Task 1: Determine Community Capacity	-Specific resources, skills and capacities needed for the project have been identified.	Completed
	-Obtain inservice training.	Completed
	-Review State of Florida PACE-EH projects to use as models.	Completed
	-Establish new working relationships with other agencies, businesses and organizations.	Completed
	-Identify potential strengths and weaknesses of community.	Completed	August 21, 2006
	-Conduct first community meeting	Completed
Task 2: Define and Characterize the Community	-Assess community partners to help determine community involvement	Completed	September 30, 2006
	-Describe the community?s characteristics, composition, organization and leadership
	-Refine the definition of the community as needed
	-Conduct a pre-pace survey
Task 3: Assemble Community Environmental Health Assessment Team	-Clarify expectations and duties of ECHD EH team members	Completed	September 30, 2006
	-Identify community partners for CEHAT and clarify expectations and duties
	-Determine a governing structure, decision-making structure, and ground rules
Task 4: Define the Goals of the Assessment	-Establish goals and objectives for the assessment	Still pending-working with County officials and residents to establish goals
	-Describe the vision that will guide the process
	-Describe the scope of issues to be addressed by the assessment
	-Define key terms
Task 5: Generate the Environmental Health Issue List	-Collect data on community concerns	Completed for the most part, still working on attitudes, behaviors and perceptions	September 30 - November 2006
	-Collect data on community knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions
	-Create a manageable list of issues

3. Outstanding Issues/Concerns

We are still concerned over the small representation from the neighborhood residents. However, we are continuing to survey the neighborhood and each meeting the number goes up. We hope if we write an article for the newspaper prior to the next meeting, we can get more participation.