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2009 PACE-EH Process
Mission
“PACE is a dynamic
collaborative process, which exists to assess, protect, and improve the
community’s environmental quality and health."
Vision
The people of Delaware
County live, work and play in a healthy environment in every stage of
their life while they preserve and enjoy their countys natural heritage
and an enhance quality of life.
Delaware County Data
PACE-EH links to demographic
information:
1998 PACE-EH Summary
Environmental Health Division
(EHD) throughout the United States face intense challenges due to the
way the nation currently addresses environmental concerns. Such challenges
result from economic, social, political and scientific developments that
directly affect the environmental health of communities. To survive and
remain effective in their role, EHD need to enlist strong support from
the communities in which they serve. The Protocol for Assessing Excellence
in Environmental Health was a pilot project developed by the National
Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO)
and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
designed to serve as a community environmental health assessment tool
to assess and understand local environmental health and quality of life
concerns. PACE-EH was a highly participatory and community driven process
in which local communities could potentially influence all the steps
from issue identification,
issue refinement,
developing indicators, and
ranking to development of strategies for action
plans. EHD that embraces the challenge of listening to the community
to determine environmental priorities and strategies must be willing to
shift paradigms, because the results of such community collaboration may
not conveniently fit into classically established environmental health
services or programs.
Reported here are the
methodologies,
challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of the protocol as tested by the
Delaware County community assessment committee. It is concluded that although
this process required extensive internal capacity and access to technical
support as well as financial and staff investment, PACE-EH is a dynamic,
gratifying and effective process to involve stake-holders in the discussion
and proposal of solutions to environmental health and quality of life
concerns.
Land
Use Planning
Accomplishments to date
Delaware Environmental Education
Partnership (DEEP)
HSTS Plan
Hands on the Land
Litter Law
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