EH Home About Us Communities Radiation Medicine Water Sewage Programs Newsroom Data

For more information on this project, contact Charles Henry, Environmental Health Director at the Sarasota County Health Department.

SARASOTA COUNTY PACE EH
January, 2006 Progress Report

We had the second meeting of the PACE EH Assessment Team on Wednesday night, January 11, 2006. Turn out was good and the agenda was aggressive.

• Agenda Items

• Welcome

• Introductions

• Define & Characterize the Community

• Assessment Team Structure

• Assessment Goals, Objectives and Scope

• Closing Comments and scheduling of next meeting.

After the welcome and introductions, we had a short review of the work accomplished in our previous meeting. This was followed by a lengthy discussion on defining our community. Eventually, the initial community definition of “Marine Ecosystem” was discarded in favor of a more focused “Sarasota Coastal Communities.” The assessment team felt that the new definition would allow the project to remain manageable in size and scope while still being inclusive of the marine ecosystem.

Next the team took some time to focus on itself. Discussion included team makeup, diversity, and balance. This resulted in several suggestions for additional team members to address these concerns. The team also decided to continue decision making through general consensus and to use a simple majority rule vote if the team could not reach consensus. Health Department staff agreed to continue to facilitate team meetings and coordinate team administrative support.

Goals for our PACE EH project were the next item the team tackled. A fair amount of time was spent discussing and defining terms such as health, environmental health, and environment as they relate to our project. It was neat to see the group dynamics at work at work through this process.

We did eventually agree on the following two goals:

1. Engage the community and investigate the relationship between environmental conditions and human health in our coastal communities.

2. Inspire citizens and visitors to enhance the health of our coastal communities.

Objectives for each goal were also discussed and became part of the assigned homework for team members to bring back to our next meeting.

Finally, Task 5 was discussed. Team members were asked to review those sections of the PACE EH guidebook and come prepared to discuss both the mechanics and timelines for Task 5 at our next meeting. The next meeting was set for February 1, 2005 at 6:30 p.m.

Following is a list of the attendees on 1/11/06:

December, 2005

October, 2004

August, 2004