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This is a full transcript of the online presentation. For the
presentation itself, go here. Presented
by:
Roberta Hammond, PhD, RS.
Food and Waterborne Disease Coordinator
Division of Environmental Health
Contact Number: 850-245-4116
Hi, my name is Roberta Hammond and Im the Statewide Coordinator for
Food and Water borne Disease for the Florida Department of Health.
In this section, we are going to talk about detection of outbreaks of
food borne illness depending on the ability to recognize clusters of
illness or illnesses of an unusual nature, and the proper prompt reporting
of the incident to the public health department to begin an investigation
and implementation of control measures. To do this you need strong partners
and risk assessments of your area. Strong risk assessment and management is
a key tool for environmental health. This presentation will include
guidelines to help you use risk assessment to build or begin building a
food borne illness addendum to your emergency response plan.
To begin with, be aware of the high value locations in your area.
Remember the food journey from farm to fork. Farm and transportation to
food processor and transportation to retail and transportation to
preparation and consumption. Contamination could happen at any of these
locations or the transportation in between. Examples include restaurants,
theme parks, hospitals, food processors, and farms. Those are the high
value locations you need to be looking for.
Determine where the needs are. Many of your larger corporations, like Publix and like the theme parks, probably already have
strong security and preparedness measures in place. However, many of the
smaller businesses with high local value havent addressed these concerns
because of money concerns, time concerns, or they simply are not aware of
the issues. Focus on those areas where you think health can make a positive
difference and list those locations in your areas.
Figure out the best way to help these locations become more prepared.
Contact the agency that regulates them, for instance, if not health. Even
if health doesnt regulate the location, it will be responsible for
investigating the outbreak there and so should assess it. With this agency,
discuss how you can best help preparedness at those locations. In
partnership, contact the location if it is feasible and helpful. And your
most likely partners in this are the Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services and the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
See if a risk assessment has been done for these locations, and is
current for food borne illness response. Many of these locations, like
hospitals and prisons, will have ongoing relationships with health, but not
so much with respect food borne illness. Make it clear you are not there to
regulate, that you are just there to help them prepare. Only work in
partnership and with approval; dont work alone. If possible, perform a
best practice risk assessment in partnership with the regulatory agency and
the location stakeholders.
Best practice risk assessments have several basic steps: Identifying
hazards, ranking hazards into risk, proposing solution for those risks,
implementing those solution with benefits
outweighing cost.
First identify the hazard. Think what if, make a hazard chart, list
potential hazards such as no identification required for food transporters
at unloading, unmonitored storage area, no procedure to background check
employees, open access to salads and desserts.
Weigh these hazards into ranked risks; rank based on potential, severity
and exposure. Open salad bars might be an acceptable risk based on the
benefit they provide. An unidentified driver is a risk with higher potential
consequence and severity. Rank this one much higher. Rank them by number
and by kind. One being the highest priority and low, medium, and high kind
categorized.
Then suggest some risk solutions. You can only recommend; you are not
mandated to regulate. The goal is the most safety at least cost, not at any
cost. So suggest, perhaps, that the salad bar is open unless there is a
threat condition that goes up and then, it should be closed until the
condition lowers. Or, suggest requiring picture identification from
delivery drivers and try to spread out the time between deliveries to
spread out the risk. Or, suggest keeping new employees in heavily monitored
areas and using good chain of custody documents to track food items.
Evaluating and using the assessment, and help locations use the
assessment in their planning tools. In your county incorporate the
assessment into current outbreak plans. Where possible, you may want to
keep specific locations on file for investigations. Communicate with state
health for assistance as needed; were there to help you.
In conclusion, the majority of problems cited in outbreak investigations
and disaster response center around communication. These are issues like:
Investigators dont know the location or the location doesnt cooperate
with the investigators. Proactively working with partner agencies and
locations to risk assess your area, as specifically as possible, can help
stop those problems before an event occurs.
You we also gain benefits in two bonus areas. You will have better
regulatory relationships where Health is the regulator. And youll have
easier unintentional food borne outbreak investigations because youll be
better prepared.
If you need help in getting started, contact the State Environmental
Health office for some ideas. Thank you.
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