The Rhode Island Department of Health's mission is disease prevention and protection and promotion of the health and safety of the people of Rhode Island. As a participant in the Environmental Health Specialist Network (EHS-Net), the Office of Food Protection, the Office of Communicable Diseases, and the Division of Laboratories will work closely with the Environmental Health Risk Specialist (EHS) to identify risk factors in restaurants, schools, health care facilities, retail food establishments, etc., that are associated with food borne illness. Once the risk factors are identified and their underlying causes are revealed, we will work closely with our partner agencies to develop an effective training program to be utilized in RI's Food Manager Certification Program. Training will also be provided to food inspectors and other agencies, as appropriate, that are involved in food safety. To measure the efficacy of the training program, the Office of Food Protection and the EHS will conduct a cohort study to examine the association of the improved food safety training program with the reduction of risk factors associated with foodborne disease. Subsequently, the information from the study will be shared with food safety agencies and EHS-Net participants to be used as a tool for enhancing their food safety efforts. We would expect that through the development and implementation of an enhanced food safety training program, that food borne disease in the population would be significantly reduced. This is in accordance with the RI Department of Health's mission statement of preventing disease and protecting and promoting the health and safety of the people of Rhode Island.
