Policy of Response to Foodborne Disease Outbreak

Ever wonder who deals with foodborne disease outbreaks or why you feel you have faith in safely grocery shopping amongst the produce section? It’s because groups like the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) are continually surveilling, investigating, and controlling capacities to promote and improve health practices that relate to foodborne disease. The policy they follow gives way to reducing foodborne diseases by having ongoing interaction and involvement, coordination and communication, and collecting funds to continue their work. The policy positively affects food service as it acts as the front line of defense, controls the real disease threat, and works to protect products of foodservice and the workers themselves.

This policy requires many actions. It requires ongoing interaction and involvement among local health departments and state and federal agencies. The policy includes procedures these locations to respond rapidly and effectively to multi-jurisdictional and multi-state outbreaks, as well as recalls, and has proven to be effective at doing so. What is unique about this policy is the team approach to foodborne outbreak response. It fully includes epidemiology, environmental health, laboratory, public health nursing, agriculture, and other food regulatory agencies. The policy provides training to the local health department workforce on how to identify and respond. Funding aids these processes as well as enhancing federal, state, and local laboratory capacity for testing clinical, food, and environmental specimens to identify and respond quickly to foodborne disease. The policy also involves means to coordinate communication responses to inform the public of any outbreak.

This policy directly impacts food and nutrition service by acting as the first line of defense against foodborne disease. It does this by coordinating among departments to recognize, respond, and inform the public of outbreaks. A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Economic Research Service states that foodborne illnesses pose an annual economic burden of over $15.5 billion. The capability of well-organized and quick answers to contain foodborne illness makes this particular policy efficient at addressing and responding to foodborne illness as a major threat to public health, local health, grocers, farmers markets, schools, food services, and more. The policy goes so far to instill paid sick leave for food service workers and health department inspection staff. This could drastically reduce the spread of foodborne disease in retail food establishments.

This policy is sturdy and efficient. Strengths include organization, coordination, sufficient funding, and communication among various departments and agencies involved in many aspects of foodborne illnesses. Weaknesses include lack of more recent research, positive or null research findings within the departments they coordinate with, and lack of more recent publications. I was unable to find many present articles about this policy. The policy could be improved by hiring some of their own employees to oversee communications and evaluate responses after they occur and work to improve the current processes.

The policy of Foodborne Disease Response is a policy that works as the first line of defense for food and foodservice. Without this policy, the burden of foodborne illness would strike the funding of the U.S. and the health/nutrition of citizens. Encompassing all groups, departments, and agencies that are a factor in this problem, this policy can work with anyone from food service workers to consumers to promote evidence-based public health practice that reduces foodborne disease. This policy is effective at identifying and addressing foodborne illness, as well as coordinating and communicating across departments to improve the safety of our food and keep a well-informed public.

 

 

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (2014).. CDC Vital Signs, “Preventing Norovirus Outbreaks,” Retrieved on September 27, 2016 from http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/norovirus/.

NACCHO. “Statement of Policy.” NACCHO, National Association of County and City Health Officials, 1 July 2014, www.naccho.org/uploads/downloadable-resources/13-07-Foodborne-Disease-Outbreak-Response.pdf.

 

NACCHO. “NACCHO Policy.” Policy for Foodborne Disease, National Association of County and City Health Officials, 1

July 2014, http://www.naccho.org/programs.

NACCHO (2013).. Local health department job losses and program cuts: Findings from the 2013 Profile Study. Retrieved August 29, 2016 from http://archived.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/lhdbudget/upload/Survey- Findings-Brief-8-13-13-3.pdf \

United States Department of Labor. (2015). Getting the Facts on Paid Sick Time. Retrieved on September 27, 2016 from https://www.dol.gov/featured/paidleave/get-the-facts-sicktime.pdf.