education

Epi-Ready Team Training

Epi-Ready Team Training: Foodborne Illness Response Strategies

EPI-Ready: Foodborne Illness Outbreak Response Training Four Legged StoolWhat Is Epi-Ready?

Developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Epi-Ready is a two-day in-person workshop for environmental and public health professionals with responsibility for investigation of foodborne illness outbreaks. With a team-based approach to training, Epi-Ready focuses on how to efficiently and effectively respond to an outbreak by understanding the roles and responsibilities of the disciplines involved—using the analogy of the 4-legged stool. What happens to a stool (investigation) if one leg is broken or missing?

The Epi-Ready 4-legged stool represents collaboration between the three disciplines involved in a foodborne illness investigation, environmental health specialists/sanitarians, epidemiologists and laboratory staff. The fourth leg of the stool comprises all others who directly or indirectly are involved in outbreak investigations, including public health nurses, health educators, industry, risk communication/public information officers, and others.

Workshop content is designed to follow the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) Guidelines.

Topics are covered through a combination of lecture, question and answer sessions, interactive group exercises and final case study.

Epi-Ready goals are that each leg of the stool…

  • Better understand the roles and responsibilities of all disciplines in an investigation.

  • Build a more efficient working relationship and open lines of communication with partners.

  • Understand that collaboration is KEY!

For more information on Epi-Ready Team Training, please contact programs@neha.org.

 

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EH Topics: 
Food Safety

  • "Ongoing conversation and collaboration between the epidemiologist and environmental health professionals has resulted directly from the workshop."
  • "Our district is restructuring our epi response team to include a dedicated foodborne outbreak "sub-team" and will construct district policies and procedures specific to this team."
  • "The workshop was excellent and the class helped the sanitarians that attended have a better working relationship with nurses and the different roles each would have in an outbreak of a foodborne disease. As a nurse it helped me have a better understanding how sanitarians felt and their responsibilities and roles."