Statewide Partnership Develops New Hampshire Environmental Health Resources Guide for Local Stakeholders - Free Training Resources Available Too!

The information contained in this article is not intended as legal advice and may no longer be accurate due to changes in the law. Consult NHMA's legal services or your municipal attorney.

New Hampshire’s APPLETREE Program – run jointly between New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services (NHDES) and Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS) - teamed up with the Dartmouth Cancer Center’s Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) team to develop training resources to support local leaders who respond to community environmental health concerns.

The team collaborated with municipal, legislative, and healthcare stakeholders to better understand types of concerns heard from local communities in order to inform the development of resources that could be helpful to them. Three training topic areas were identified, and a table of resources titled:  New Hampshire Environmental Health Guide (NH-EHG) was developed.  This guide is designed to help legislators, city and town health officers, municipal officials, administrators, and other stakeholders find the appropriate State resource or agency quickly to address environmental concerns raised by members of their community.

The free trainings are available online via the New Hampshire APPLETREE webpage at https://www.des.nh.gov/new-hampshire-appletree.  Available trainings include:

Training 1:  NH Environmental Health Resource Guide (NH-EHG) introduces the audience to partners available to assist them (e.g., NHDES, APPLETREE, DHHS) and reviews an example of how to use the NH-EHG).

PDF can be viewed/downloaded here: https://www.des.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt341/files/documents/nh-ehg.pdf

Training recording can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SjkKg_UcIM&feature=youtu.be

Training 2:  Cancer Concerns in the Community outlines the principles that underlie cancer concern investigations and describes an approach to use if someone in the community raises a concern about the numbers of cancers in their neighborhood. Stay tuned, this training will be released soon!

Training 3:  Understanding Environmental Contamination and Risk introduces the audience to environmental contamination, environmental health hazards, and provides information on risk communication and risk perception relative to understanding and communicating the risk of environmental contaminants.

Training recording can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCvtUR9x128

One of the resources listed in the NH EHG is the NH Radon Program. The Dartmouth Cancer Center team is developing a Healthy Homes initiative to increase the community’s use of this program which provides free radon test kits to New Hampshire residents: https://drhomeair.fmbetterforms.com/#/new-hampshire-free.  We encourage you to share this information broadly within your communities. Please contact DCC’s COE Associate Director, Dr. Judy Rees (judy.rees@dartmouth.edu) if you have ideas about how to increase community participation in this program and hear from any cities and towns who post this information on radon testing on their municipal websites.

Municipal officials and other stakeholders are strongly encouraged to utilize and share these new environmental health educational resources within their cities and towns.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  NHDES, APPLETREE Principal Investigator, Robert Thistle, PhD, Robert.Thistle@des.nh.gov; Dartmouth Cancer Center, Office of Community Outreach and Engagement, Judy Rees, BM, BCh, MPH, PhD, Judy.Rees@dartmouth.edu.