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For more information on this project, contact Jennifer Plass, PACE EH Coordinator, or Al Cleveland, Environmental Health Director at the Washington County Health Department.

WASHINGTON COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT
June 2006 PACE-EH Progress Report

To:         Daniel Parker
 

From:     Jennifer Plass
               PACE EH Coordinator, Washington County
 

The little town that will!

Puff, puff! Chug, choo! This project has been slowly chugging along, uphill of course, for quite some time now. After much help from Samuel, our fellow PACE EH Coordinators, and our recent Regional PACE EH meeting here in Washington County we are off to a positive and renewed restart - Whew!

When this project was initially started in July 2005, a survey was conducted in the town of Vernon and methamphetamine use was identified as an issue within the community. Therefore, Ricky Sewell, a narcotics officer from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office spoke at our last PACE EH assembly about methamphetamine manufacturing and use. There was a good turnout for the size of the community and the people in attendance were attentive and had a lot of questions for Detective Sewell. Many of them have been affected first hand by the devastating affects of methamphetamine use by family and friends. Attached are two photos from that meeting. While we do not know what new issues will be brought to light with our next step, our assembly with the Sheriff’s office and the community was positive, low hanging fruit for this project.

Our next step in the Vernon project is to conduct a door to door outreach in the community. We chose this track for two reasons. First, the community is small enough that this approach is feasible and second, the community has been half heartedly summoned in the earlier days of this project to attend community meetings that have ultimately failed. We need to regain the people’s trust and truly get a candid understanding of how the people of Vernon rate the environmental health status in their community. This step is being implemented in lieu of the standard initial PACE EH meeting in a community. After the door to door step is complete we will continue following the traditional 13 tasks of PACE EH.

So off we go down our little train track…by this time next month we will have reached every house in the community and we should have some interesting travel tales to tell!

Past Washington County Updates

April/May, 2006

June 20, 2006 - Vernon Citizens Invited to Participate in Environmental Health Study