ATSDR -- FY 1999 AGENCY PROFILE AND ANNUAL REPORT
physicians, public and private health care practitioners, and medical students)
citywide; (3) a 4-hour workshop for 40 community members; and (4) a train-
the-trainer workshop for faculty nurses from the San Antonio area. The
workshops have helped foster greater cooperation and trust between the
community, the local health department, and health care providers. Following
these workshops, the community, local nurses, and the local health department
have been collaborating to plan additional health interventions. The
community and local health department are planning to hold a health fair that
will provide health screenings and information for community members.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico
The Rio Arriba Environmental Health Partnership is a community-based
pilot project in northern New Mexico near the site of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory. This partnership between a steering committee, the University of
New Mexico Center for Population Health, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and ATSDR provides training and information in environmental
health. The partnership has fostered working relationships among the
primarily Hispanic community members and external agencies. In FY 1999,
ATSDR staff developed and presented an epidemiology short course for local
community college students. The students are now involved in several
environmental health projects within their communities and are recognized as
a resource for environmental health information for northern New Mexico
residents. Other environmental health courses are being developed.
Mississippi Delta Project
To address the environmental health needs of generally underserved
communities in the Mississippi Delta region, ATSDR funded Howard
University School of Nursing to develop a first-ever environmental health
curriculum for nurses. The curriculum is to be used to train the trainers of
nurses in the Delta region through local Historically Black Colleges and
Universities and will be implemented in nursing schools nationwide. This
curriculum was completed and released in FY 1999 to 220 schools of nursing in
the Mississippi Delta Region. It has since received high interest nationally and
internationally and has been reprinted twice. The National Library of Medicine
is currently designing a Web site for the curriculum. Also, the University of
Maryland and the Kellogg Foundation have developed a partnership to help
implement the curriculum. In FY 2000, Howard University will evaluate the
outreach and effectiveness of this curriculum effort.
Fish Consumption Guidelines
Through an interagency agreement with the EPA, DHEP initiated a
national distribution of the fish consumption guidelines Should I Eat the Fish I
Catch? in English, Spanish, and Hmong. Approximately 300,000 copies of the
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