Environmental Health Training in Emergency Response (EHTER) - Awareness Level

Read about how EHTER prepares environmental health workers for emergency response. Find out how EHTER graduates apply what they learned in the course to tornado responses in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri. Learn how EH responders in Alaska, Tunisia, and the Caribbean also received the training.
NEW!
See video from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) on the environmental health response to Alabama tornadoes: six months later

CDC’s EHTER Awareness Level course is now available through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/FEMA CDP in Anniston, Alabama.
This awareness-level training, sponsored by DHS/FEMA and CDC/National Center for Environmental Health, is a 32-hour (4-day) course that provides an overview of environmental health topics, issues, and challenges faced during emergency response. The purpose of the course is to increase the level of emergency preparedness of environmental health practitioners and other emergency response personnel by providing them with the necessary knowledge, skills, and resources to address the environmental health impacts of emergencies and disasters.
Transportation, lodging, and meals are provided by DHS/FEMA to students from state, local and tribal jurisdictions at no cost to their agency. For more details about this course and other EHTER courses being offered, please visit https://cdp.dhs.gov/schedules/program/s.html

Background

Several assessments have demonstrated the need for emergency preparedness and response education and training for environmental health practitioners. However, there is currently no national, comprehensive, standardized education and training program in this area.
To address this need, CDC’s Environmental Health Services Branch (EHSB) collaborated with the Florida Department of Health; Louisville Metro Health Department; and other federal, state, and local public health and environmental health partners to develop a comprehensive pilot training. EHTER's 10 modules focus on key environmental health issues and challenges for emergency response, such as food safety, water quality, wastewater disposal, shelter assessment/sanitation, vector control/pest management, responder safety, building assessment, solid waste/hazardous materials, radiation and environmental health response, and disaster management.
CDC strives to make EHTER available to the environmental health workforce at the state, local, tribal, and territorial levels. To help ensure that this critical component of the public health workforce has the training they need in emergency response, EHTER is also available through the following mechanisms:

Free online course through the National Environmental Health Association (registration is required)
Free in-person training

Environmental health practitioners perform many critical functions during emergency response, such as conducting shelter assessments, testing drinking water supplies, conducting food safety inspections, and controlling disease-causing vectors. EHTER will better prepare federal, state, local, and tribal environmental health practitioners (e.g., sanitarians, environmental health specialists) by providing them with the basic knowledge, skills, and resources to address the environmental health concerns that result from emergencies and disasters.
Hundreds of environmental health practitioners from all 50 states, two territories, and the District of Columbia have completed EHTER pilot trainings. Post-training test scores have consistently shown marked improvement of preparedness knowledge over pre-training test scores. Participant feedback has been very positive and has led to continuous improvements in the training with each successive pilot. Participants have also demonstrated real-world application of the concepts and information learned, improving response capacity during actual emergencies and disasters such as power outages, a train derailment with release of hazardous materials, tornadoes, and wildfires.
Several states, including Florida, Arizona, California, Louisiana, and West Virginia, have adopted the EHTER curricula and delivered courses for their environmental health practitioners.

Next Steps

CDC experts are working closely with FEMA/CDP in Anniston, Alabama, to deliver the training to environmental health practitioners across the country. Future plans include the development of operational- and planning/management-level EHTER courses.

Additional Information

Download the EHTER fact sheet

[PDF - 372 KB].
For more information on EHTER, contact CAPT Mark Miller (770-488-7652 or mdmiller@cdc.gov) or Martin A. Kalis (770-488-4568 or mkalis@cdc.gov).
For more information and resources related to environmental health emergency response, visit the CDC Emergency and Terrorism Preparedness for Environmental Health Practitioners Web site at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ETP/default.htm.

For more information and resources related to Environmental Health Services (EHS), visit the CDC EHS Web site at http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs.