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2021 State Enacted Food Legislation: June 2021
Date posted: Wednesday, June 23, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDState legislatures introduced several hundred bills related to food during the 2021 legislative sessions. Almost every state introduced legislation regarding food—including food ...
2021 Year in Government Affairs
Date posted: Monday, January 10, 2022Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDI've completed my first full year as director of Government Affairs for NEHA and, as such, would like to list the accomplishments of the program in 2021.This endeavor is more tha...
2023 State Legislation on Body Art
January 9, 2024 A total of 60 pieces of legislation related to body art were introduced in 19 states and Puerto Rico during the 2023 legislative sessions. Of these 60, 9 were enacted in California, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, Tennessee. ...
2023 Update on State Food Safety Legislation
October 3, 2023 The following table provides a summary of bills related to food safety that have been introduced by state legislations in 2023.Food Safety Topic# of Bills IntroducedRetail food67Food freedom66Food safety51Meat, seafood, or poultr...
2023: Our Year in Review for Government Affairs
January 5, 2024 Washington, DC, remains as chaotic as ever. Congress spent more time trying to figure out a speaker than floor time on appropriations. The House of Representatives is as far behind as it has ever been on passing the fiscal year (...
A Community Case Study on Geographic, Environmental, and Social Health Disparities in COVID-19 Disease
This article examines the socioeconomic, geographic, and environmental vulnerabilities within a rural area. The article reviews that rural areas are particularly susceptible to the continuum of expected COVID-19 disease and related outcomes. Rur...
A Multi-Hazards Earth Science Perspective on the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Potential for Concurrent and Cascading Crises
This article explores an epidemic model with a concurrent disaster event, which predicts a greater infection rate following the events during the pre-infection rate peaks period compared with post peak events. This highlights the need for enacti...
A Rapid Assessment of Disaster Preparedness Needs and Resources During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This article provides a rapid qualitative assessment method to determine the impact of the pandemic on preparedness and response to natural disasters and the impact of past experiences with natural disasters in responding to the pandemic. This a...
Addressing Critical Success Factors for Improving Concurrent Emergency Management: Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic
This journal article discusses the challenges in managing natural disasters and emergencies that occur during a pandemic. It identifies the critical success factors having a major role in effective management of concurrent emergencies and evalua...
An Eye on COVID: Hurricane Preparedness at a COVID-19 Alternative Care Site
This article shares the process of establishing a Medical Monitoring Station (MMS) in downtown New Orleans to maximize patient safety and continuity of operations during a real-world event. In 2020, the state of Louisiana activated the MMS that ...
Back on the Hill Again, Virtually
May 28, 2024 During the hectic federal budget month of May, we were again talking to Congress, this time virtually.Republican appropriators from the House of Representative came out with their top line fiscal year (FY) 2025 budgets—$711 billion ...
Biden Announces Nominees for Key Positions on Health and Science
Date posted: Thursday, January 21, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDThe incoming Biden Administration has announced cabinet nominees, many White House positions, and several nominees for key posts within the administration.Regarding science, th...
Biden-Harris Administration to Invest $7 Billion From American Rescue Plan to Hire and Train Public Health Workers in Response to COVID-19
Date posted: Friday, June 4, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDLast month the White House announced that it will be redistributing $7.4 billion from the American Rescue Plan to hire and train public health workers in response to COVID-19, includ...
Bottom-Up Citizen Engagement for Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management
This article describes how there is a need to advance bottom-up engagement in health disaster and emergency management programs, policies and research. The article also highlights that all disasters and health emergencies start at the local leve...
Building Resilient Coalitions: Health and Medical Response Through COVID-19 Concurrent Events
This article analyzes the critical role that non-profit organizations play in capacity-building among healthcare institutions in a large medical center. An assessment of the conceptual resilience model is used by the organizations as they respon...
Caring for the Forgotten Children: Rebuilding Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, Earthquakes, and COVID-19
This article focuses on mental health resiliency within child and adolescent groups as well as the general community members. Communities have vulnerabilities that are often displayed when being impacted by disasters and it is important to learn...
Cascading Risks of COVID-19 Resurgence During an Active 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season
This article reviews risks of hurricanes to coastal states during the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Protecting the population from hurricane hazards revolves around evacuation and sheltering individuals. However, e...
Challenges for the Disaster Workforce During a Compound Hurricane-Pandemic
This article identifies how emergency management planning for both the changing dynamics of COVID-19 and hurricane season may change under a compound threat. COVID-19 and the increase of natural disasters occurring pushes new considerations to b...
Changing Vulnerability for Hurricane Evacuation During a Pandemic
This article examines data from workshops involving emergency management and public health experts to support planning for hurricane evacuation and sheltering. This resource includes: Policy integration findings Expanded protections for popula...
Compound Natural and Human Disasters: Managing Drought and COVID-19 to Sustain Global Agriculture and Food Sectors
This article describes how droughts and pandemics interact and identifies appropriate policies to address them individually and together. Disasters, both natural and human made disrupt global food supply chains when they occur at the same time a...
Compound Risks of Hurricane Evacuation Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States
This article models how a hurricane evacuation from four different counties in a state would impact COVID-19 case levels. The number of COVID-19 cases produced by the evacuation is influenced by the ability of destination counties meeting the ne...
Compounding Hazards and Intersecting Vulnerabilities
This report discusses study findings that measure how COVID-19 affected extreme heat vulnerability during the summer of 2020. This resource includes: Examination of socio-demographic characteristics and pandemic related factors Examined vulne...
Concurrent Disaster Response Success Story
This success story describes how the Environmental Division of the Town of Addison, Texas faced the challenges of a winter storm during COVID-19 in the context of ensuring food safety, public health, and providing warming stations and power to a...
Concurrent Threats and Disasters: Modeling and Managing Risk and Resilience
This article provides a literature review of how policymakers were prompted to reassess operations and management strategies that support society’s critical functions like infrastructure, healthcare services, supply chains, and emergency respons...
Congress and Congressional Appropriations in the Final Weeks
Date posted: Tuesday, September 22, 2020Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDThe new fiscal year begins on October 1 and the Senate has yet to vote—even at the subcommittee or committee level—on any of the 12 regular appropriations bills. Over in the H...
Congress in Negotiations to Finalize the Fiscal Year 2023 Appropriations
Tuesday, December 6, 2022dfarquhar@neha.org With the midterms over, Congress needs to finish their work on the fiscal year (FY) 2023 budgets. Republicans proposed a top-line of roughly $1.65 trillion in discretionary spending, in line with Presi...
Congress Passes the $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill
Date posted: Monday, November 8, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDCongress was busy this weekend by passing the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (HR 3684) and agreeing to act on the $1.85 trillion reconciliation m...
Congress to Approve Fiscal Year 2024 Funding for Several Federal Agencies
March 4, 2024 Congress released the massive $467.5 billion fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations package for the Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and Transportation-HUD budgets. T...
Congressional House Appropriations Markup of the Labor-HHS-Education Budget Provides Significant Increases to the Nation’s Public Health Infrastructure
Date posted: Friday, July 16, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDThe House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget and released its markup budget this week. The subcommi...
Congresswoman Lawrence Introduces the Environmental Health Workforce Act
Date posted: Saturday, May 15, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDThe Environmental Health Workforce Act (H.R. 2661) was introduced by Representative Brenda Lawrence (D-Michigan) on April 19, 2021. The act would require the Secretary of the U.S. ...
COVID-19 Crisis Communications: The Challenge for Environmental Organizations
This article examines the ways environmental organizations amended their crisis communications to underscore their relevance to crises and their role in problem-solving. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. environmental organizations...
COVID-19, the Built Environment, and Health
This article discusses features of the built environment that affect the risk of COVID-19 and identify elements of the pandemic response with implications for the built environment and for long-term public health. This resource includes: Influe...
Data-Driven Operation of the Resilient Electric Grid: A Case of COVID-19
This article explores the resilience of power grids in the face of pandemics and various machine learning tools that can be helpful to augment human operators are discussed by reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on power grid operations and actions...
December 2024
Journal of Environmental Health Volume 87, Number 5 View the IssueAbout the Cover Tropospheric ozone concentrations have trended downward in many U.S. cities since 2000. In Texas, however, concentrations and regulatory exceedances abruptly ro...
Disaster Behavioral Health Through the Lens of COVID-19
This article reviews the history and framework of emergency planning and response and addresses aspects related to COVID-19. Recommendations for how best to incorporate behavioral health responses into future disaster emergency planning are offe...
Dueling Emergencies: Flood Evacuation Ridesharing During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This paper examines the complexity behind the decision-making relating to rideshare during an emergency like COVID-19. Sharing resources during disaster events like vehicles, supports the expansion of critical capacity and enables inclusive disa...
Enacted State Food Legislation
Date posted: Thursday, September 23, 2021Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDState legislatures introduced several hundred bills related to food during the 2021 legislative sessions. Almost every state introduced legislation regarding food. From food ...
Environmental Health Holds the Keys to Public Health's Future
Date posted: Friday, June 5, 2020Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDOne of the foremost paradigm changes that has occurred in public policy in the past 10 years is the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Aff...
Excess of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Due to Fine Particulate Matter Exposure During the 2020 Wildfires in the United States
This article analyzes data on PM2.5, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and other confounders for 92 western U.S. counties affected by 2020 wildfires. It includes estimates of the association between short-term exposure to PM2.5 and the ep...
FDA Appoints Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Program
August 29, 2023 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the appointment of James “Jim” Jones as the first-ever deputy commissioner for the Human Foods Program. As deputy commissioner of the Human Foods Program, J...
Federal Funding: Congressional Update
February 26, 2024 As we move into the sixth month of the federal fiscal year (FY 2024) with no final agreement and the continuing resolution (CR) expiring, Congress needs to act—either to enact the appropriations bill or another CR.No one in Con...
Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023
June 6, 2023 On Saturday, June 3, 2023, President Joe Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023, which raises the debt ceiling to allow the U.S. federal government to continue to pay its bills. The deal suspends the deb...
Fiscal Year 2021 Budget
Date posted: Monday, December 28, 2020Blog poster: Doug Farquhar, JDOn Monday, December 21, the House and Senate Appropriators came to an agreement regarding the fiscal year (FY) 2021 federal budget. Congress released the omnibus appropriations ...
Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Bill
Thursday, December 22, 2022dfarquhar@neha.orgCongress has released a bipartisan and bicameral (i.e. both legislative branched) spending package, known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023. The package includes all of the fiscal year (FY) ...
Fiscal Year 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill
May 18, 2023The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies marked up the fiscal year (FY) 2024 appropriations bill on May 18, 2023. The committee approved a party line ...
Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations Moving Forward, Albeit Slowly
June 26, 2023After the recent debacle over the debt ceiling, Congress is once again working on the fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget. The Senate is using the agreed-to FY 2023 amount set by the debt ceiling and the House of Representatives is followi...
Government Affairs Accomplishments in 2022
February 2, 2023Our Government Affairs program continues to expand its influence by reaching out to the current administration, Congress, and federal agencies, as well as engaging in state activities such as tracking state legislation and workin...
House and Senate Continue to Work on Fiscal Year 2024 Appropriations
July 24, 2023 The appropriation bills for Fiscal Year 2024 are being finalized, with the House Appropriations Committee passing the FY 2024 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bi...