Environmental Health Continuous
Improvement Board
May 13, 2015 Meeting Take-Home Points and Action Items
Take-Home Points
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The Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board and staff from the
Partnership and Workforce Development Unit of the Food, Pools and Lodging Services
section at MDH mapped the current process for the Food, Pools, and Lodging Services
program evaluation. The Board is taking a structured quality improvement approach to
improve the evaluation process. Creating a map of the process was an important first
step in understanding all of the issues before jumping to solutions. In order to promote
future cross-agency learning/sharing, Minnesota Department of Agriculture Staff
attended the meeting.

At its May meeting, the Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board
identified a number of themes for improvement in the current Food, Pools, and Lodging
Services program evaluation process
o Interaction;
o Continuous improvement;
o Focus on public health risk;
o Clear, consistent, transparent expectations; and
o Partnering relationships (a full description of the themes is attached).
The Board would like to know if these themes resonate with those who participated in
the evaluation process and will be asking for constituent feedback before their July
meeting.

In order to make progress on their goals to clarify and improve environmental health
communication channels; and establish a formal, collaborative process for policy
development and roll-out, the Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board is
creating an inventory of environmental health related committees, networking groups,
forums, etc.

The Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board has issued a Statement of
Support for Minnesota’s State-Local Environmental Health Partnership. The statement
can be found on the Board’s website. Environmental health practitioners, organizations
and partners are encouraged to share the statement of support broadly.
Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board
Minnesota Department of Health
Public Health Practice Section – Health Partnerships Division
P.O. Box 64975
St. Paul, MN 55164-0975
(651) 201-3880
Action Items
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Partnership and Workforce Development Unit staff will collect data, forms and
additional information to inform the next phase of the Food, Pools, and Lodging Services
Program Evaluation improvement initiative.
Health Partnerships staff will arrange to have the Statement of Support for Minnesota’s
State-Local Health Partnership shared with State Community Health Services Advisory
Committee (SCHSAC) members at their next meeting.
When the re-evaluations are complete, Steven Diaz will share a summary of findings
from the process with the Environmental Health Improvement Board. The Board will use
the summary to inform the Food, Pools, and Lodging Services program evaluation
improvement efforts.
Steven Diaz and Tom Hogan (MDH) will coordinate with Lorna Schmidt (LPHA) to ensure
relevant environmental health issues are included in LPHA’s legislative session summary.
Karen Swenson will submit a concurrent session proposal for the 2015 Community
Health Conference on behalf of the Board.
MDH EH staff and Health Partnerships Division staff will develop a draft map/inventory
of existing environmental health committees, networking groups, forums, etc. for the
Board to review at a future meeting.
Upcoming Meetings
 July 8, 2015
 September 9, 2015
 November 16, 2015
Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board
Minnesota Department of Health
Public Health Practice Section – Health Partnerships Division
P.O. Box 64975
St. Paul, MN 55164-0975
(651) 201-3880
Themes for Improvement of the Food, Pools and Lodging
Services Program Evaluation Process
Working List – March 11th, 2015
1. Interaction- Program staff would like more interaction with MDH during the review process.
There is currently very little interaction with the evaluators and ongoing dialog and
communication is needed. Program staff would also like the opportunity to sit down with an
evaluator to discuss the issues they’ve identified for their program. Programs don’t want to
be surprised when their evaluation report comes back.
2. Continuous Improvement- MDH should focus on applying a continuous quality
improvement approach/lens to the entire evaluation process. Identify areas for
improvement so programs can take corrective actions to improve their rating. Make the
evaluation about the program not the people. Program staff indicated that receiving
acknowledgement for improvements to processes and procedures identified in the
evaluation is important. Programs don’t want to continue to be penalized for low frequency
rates after they have implemented changes.
3. Focus on Public Health Risk - A better balance needs to be found between addressing
legitimate risks and code compliance. In many cases MDH has been issuing citations based
on the letter of the code versus the intent of the code to protect the public’s health. For
example the code dictates pools are inspected at certain intervals; those intervals do not
line up with pool seasons based on weather.
4. Clear, Consistent, Transparent Expectations- Ensure the messaging from MDH is clear and
consistent. Program staff voiced concern about not knowing what is acceptable to MDH and
were surprised when they received their evaluation report. Program staff stressed the
importance of having consistent processes for all delegated agencies and holding each
program to the same standards. MDH should standardize the evaluation process such that it
is more uniform and consistent across local programs. MDH should provide supporting
documentation explaining why a particular rating was received. MDH should also provide
programs with feedback and guidance about the required elements of the evaluation.
5. Partnering Relationships- Learning to work together by fostering relationships among peers
and having peers participate in each other’s evaluations is important. Partnerships help to
enhance improvement. Program staff also expressed interest in build cooperative and
trusting relationships with MDH. MDH should be more involved in helping programs develop
plans for improvement. They also suggested MDH create templates and forms containing
acceptable ordinance language.
Environmental Health Continuous Improvement Board
Minnesota Department of Health
Public Health Practice Section – Health Partnerships Division
P.O. Box 64975
St. Paul, MN 55164-0975
(651) 201-3880