Section 3

Background

Section 4: Background of EH Grant

In 2020, SPTHB was awarded the Supporting Environmental Health Response, Recovery,Mitigation, and Other Expenses Related to Declared 2018/2019 Disasters Grant from the Center for Disease and Control (CDC) on August 30th, 2019. The grant had a one year timeframe and was granted a one year continuation ending on August 31st, 2022.

The grant covered five (5) main objectives to address environmental health hazards:

1. Identify & partner with Tribes in areas with declared disasters and/or emergencies

– Subaward up to 7 tribal partners to strengthen their capacity to identify and respond to EH hazard needs and to implement programs and services based on those needs

2. Identify specific needs for strengthening capacity to respond to, recover from and/or mitigate environmental health hazards that resulted from or exacerbated by declared disasters and emergencies

– Develop a needs assessment for all Tribes to assess capacity to respond to, recover from and/or mitigate environmental health hazards that resulted from or exacerbated

– Disseminate needs assessment to partnering Tribes served by SPTHB (Tribes located in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas)

3. Support tribal efforts to respond to and address specific capacity needs identified

– Use results from assessment to determine support needed and provide subject matter expertise to improve capacity

– Identify trainings and additional resources needed based on results of assessments

4. Strengthen environmental health data use and informatics capacity

– Assess and improve information systems and informatics capacity to support identifying and characterizing EH that result from the declared disasters and/or emergencies with tribal jurisdictions in the area we serve

– Implement a text messaging system that provides up-to-date information and support to partnering tribes

– Identify and evaluate the utility of EH datasets for identifying hazards arising from the declared disaster

– Provide training to strengthen EH professional technical competencies in using data to identify and address EH needs or hazards arising from the declared disaster

5. Prevent, and control identified environmental health hazards

– Identify and implement interventions proven to be effective in mitigating the effects of EH that resulted from the declared disasters

– Use partnerships for collaborative approaches to identify and control EH related to the declared disasters

Expected Outcomes from the EH grant:

+ Use results to determine support needed and provide subject matter expertise to improve overall capacity to handle response, recovery, and mitigation of natural disasters and emergencies

+ Identify specific trainings targeted to the needs of the tribes who participated in the assessment

+ Identify programs and interventions specific to tribal needs

+ Use partnerships for collaborative approaches to identify and control environmental hazards related to declared disasters

+ Effective interventions developed and implemented to address disaster-related EH hazards

+ Interventions demonstrated to be effective and sustainable

+ Activities to strengthen the ability to meet public health needs in a comprehensive manner

+ Increased implementation of tools and processes that build operational capacity and effectiveness

+ Increased use of core and discipline-specific public health competencies among public health workers

+ Improved collection, maintenance, interpretation, and dissemination of tribal health data

SPTHB Granted Eight (8) Tribal Subawards:

Southern Plains Tribal Health Board