Wednesday, January 15, 2025
1/15/2025
The Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment (PDPHE) is committed to promoting the health and protecting the environment of Pueblo County. It is understood that accomplishing this goal requires knowledge of the strong connection between the environment and the health of individuals and communities, and that not only does the environment affects the health of people, but that people can affect the health of the environment. PDPHE’s Environmental Health and Emergency Preparedness (EHEP) Division offers a full complement of environmental health (EH) programs to identify, address, and prevent exposure to EH hazards within Pueblo County. Unfortunately, despite the full complement of programs and services, PDPHE’s EH capacity to collect, detect, and analysis EH data for the majority of its programs is extremely limited. Furthermore, PDPHE has identified concerns pertaining to safe recreational swimming water in Pueblo County and the ability to ensure safety of Pueblo County residents. Therefore, PDPHE is proposing projects under Component A: Build Core Capacity to use Environmental Health Data, and Component B2 Safe Water – Developing Comprehensive and Effective Safe Recreational Water Programs (swimming pools). The purpose of PDPHE’s proposed projects are: 1) strengthen PDPHE’s EH informatics capacity to collect, detect and analyze data to make data-informed decisions to protect Pueblo County residents from EH hazards; and 2) improve recreational swimming pool water in Pueblo County by improving aquatic facility inspection practices, standardize data collection, and working with local, regional, state and national partners to create a robust and comprehensive aquatic health program for Pueblo County. By the end of the project, multiple outcomes are expected for Component A. First, PDPHE will work with HealthSpace, the data software system used by PDPHE, to increase the number of programs able to use HealthSpace to track and analyze inspection data in order to determine hazards and trends, monitor improvements, and share information with operators and the public to instigate change. As a result of working with HealthSpace, PDPHE will also learn how to enter other programs into HealthSpace in order to also build internal capacity among PDPHE staff. Identifying strategies to address trends and hazards identified will also be a significant component of this work. PDPHE has built strong relationships with stakeholders in the community that work with PDPHE as well as neighboring county health departments and EH programs. Lessons learned from implementation of these strategies will be shared with these stakeholders and used to standardized inspection protocols and forms. By the end of the project, multiple outcomes are expected for Component B. First, the current recreational water inspection protocols and codes are out of date and do not allow for sufficient identification of hazards. Thus, significant work will be done to update PDPHE protocols and practices and move facilities toward adoption of comprehensive aquatic health codes. By updating testing protocols, PDPHE will be able gather and analyze more comprehensive data on aquatic hazards in order to understand trends, identify strategies to remove hazards and monitor improvements to aquatic hazards. Next, all of the updated data will be uploaded into HealthSpace and methods will be implemented to share this with the public in order to empower them to make decisions about the aquatic water they visit. Significant education and technical assistance will be provided to aquatic facility operators in order to ultimately gain buy-in to formally adopt comprehensive aquatic codes for Pueblo County.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).