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Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments
(1) Background: Several agencies in the United States play a primary role in ensuring food safety, yet foodborne illnesses result in about 3000 deaths and cost more than USD 15.6 billion each year. The study objectives included analyzing local health departments’ (LHDs) level of engagement in food s...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9223748/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35742588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127344 |
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author | Shah, Gulzar H. Shankar, Padmini Sittaramane, Vinoth Ayangunna, Elizabeth Afriyie-Gyawu, Evans |
author_facet | Shah, Gulzar H. Shankar, Padmini Sittaramane, Vinoth Ayangunna, Elizabeth Afriyie-Gyawu, Evans |
author_sort | Shah, Gulzar H. |
collection | PubMed |
description | (1) Background: Several agencies in the United States play a primary role in ensuring food safety, yet foodborne illnesses result in about 3000 deaths and cost more than USD 15.6 billion each year. The study objectives included analyzing local health departments’ (LHDs) level of engagement in food safety and other related services, and LHDs’ characteristics associated with those services. (2) Methods: We used data from 1496 LHDs that participated in the 2019 National Profile of Local Health Departments Survey, administered to all 2459 LHDs in the United States. Logistic regression analyses were performed to model multiple dichotomous variables. (3) Results: An estimated 78.9% of LHDs performed food safety inspections, 78.3% provided food safety education, 40.7% provided food processing inspections, and 48.4% engaged in policy and advocacy. The odds for LHDs to directly provide preventive nutrition services were 20 times higher if the LHDs had one or more nutritionists on staff (Adjusted Odds Ratio or AOR = 20.0; Confidence Interval, CI = 12.4–32.2) compared with LHDs with no nutritionists. Other LHD characteristics significantly associated with the provision of nutrition services (p < 0.05) included population size, state governance (rather than local), and LHD having at least one registered, licensed, practical, or vocational nurse. The odds of providing food processing services were lower for locally governed than state-governed LHDs (AOR = 0.5; CI = 0.4–0.7). The odds of performing food safety inspections varied by LHD’s population size, whether a nutritionist was on staff, whether it was state-governed (vs. locally), and whether it completed a community health assessment (CHA) within 5 years. (4) Conclusions: LHDs play a critical role in ensuring safe food for Americans, yet variations exist in their performance based on their specific characteristics. Adequate funding and a competent workforce are essential for LHDs to utilize evidence-based practices and engage in policymaking and advocacy concerning food safety. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9223748 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-92237482022-06-24 Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments Shah, Gulzar H. Shankar, Padmini Sittaramane, Vinoth Ayangunna, Elizabeth Afriyie-Gyawu, Evans Int J Environ Res Public Health Article (1) Background: Several agencies in the United States play a primary role in ensuring food safety, yet foodborne illnesses result in about 3000 deaths and cost more than USD 15.6 billion each year. The study objectives included analyzing local health departments’ (LHDs) level of engagement in food safety and other related services, and LHDs’ characteristics associated with those services. (2) Methods: We used data from 1496 LHDs that participated in the 2019 National Profile of Local Health Departments Survey, administered to all 2459 LHDs in the United States. Logistic regression analyses were performed to model multiple dichotomous variables. (3) Results: An estimated 78.9% of LHDs performed food safety inspections, 78.3% provided food safety education, 40.7% provided food processing inspections, and 48.4% engaged in policy and advocacy. The odds for LHDs to directly provide preventive nutrition services were 20 times higher if the LHDs had one or more nutritionists on staff (Adjusted Odds Ratio or AOR = 20.0; Confidence Interval, CI = 12.4–32.2) compared with LHDs with no nutritionists. Other LHD characteristics significantly associated with the provision of nutrition services (p < 0.05) included population size, state governance (rather than local), and LHD having at least one registered, licensed, practical, or vocational nurse. The odds of providing food processing services were lower for locally governed than state-governed LHDs (AOR = 0.5; CI = 0.4–0.7). The odds of performing food safety inspections varied by LHD’s population size, whether a nutritionist was on staff, whether it was state-governed (vs. locally), and whether it completed a community health assessment (CHA) within 5 years. (4) Conclusions: LHDs play a critical role in ensuring safe food for Americans, yet variations exist in their performance based on their specific characteristics. Adequate funding and a competent workforce are essential for LHDs to utilize evidence-based practices and engage in policymaking and advocacy concerning food safety. MDPI 2022-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9223748/ /pubmed/35742588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127344 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Shah, Gulzar H. Shankar, Padmini Sittaramane, Vinoth Ayangunna, Elizabeth Afriyie-Gyawu, Evans Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title | Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title_full | Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title_fullStr | Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title_full_unstemmed | Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title_short | Ensuring Food Safety for Americans: The Role of Local Health Departments |
title_sort | ensuring food safety for americans: the role of local health departments |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9223748/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35742588 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127344 |
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