NEHA's Building Food Safety Regulatory Capacity Through the Development of the National Curriculum Standard and Through Educational Development; Training and Other Learning Moments

Project Summary/Abstract Since 2011, the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) has been working oncooperative agreements with FDA and other partners to build training and certification for theintegrated food safety system (IFSS) as mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This work has created a wealth of valuable educational and training resources, including theNational Curriculum Standard (NCS). The NCS is an educational roadmap that can help build food safetyregulatory capacity from the entry level through leadership. Inside this map, the waypoints are theknowledge, skills, and abilities needed to achieve the public health goal of keeping the food supply safeand wholesome. There is still much work to be done in developing education and training for everyaspect of the NCS in human food, animal food, and laboratory regulatory needs. NEHA will continue tobring expertise and cooperation to the table. As this development continues to take place, there is also a need to persist in teaching today?sregulatory workforce on the scientific knowledge, tools, and techniques needed to regulate the foodsupply with the goal of keeping food safe. This ongoing work will continue, using online resources forthe core knowledge elements, and face-to-face experiential learning that puts this knowledge intopractice. NEHA will continue to be a leader in this area as we refine adult learning principles such asimmersive teaching techniques, peer-to-peer learning, and kinesthetic experiences. To complete the lifecycle of learning, NEHA will continue to measure knowledge learnedthrough formative and summative assessments and will reach out to participants post-training todetermine retention and usage of knowledge. Information gained from this and course evaluations willbe used to hone the courses as part of a total quality improvement plan. In addition, the recent COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders have made itclear that alternative education and training mechanisms must continue to be developed and refined tonot just impart information, but to reach adult learners with the same intellectual impact as interactiveface-to-face trainings. In fact, during the first week of April 2020, over 11,500 downloads of e-learningcontent occurred on the NEHA learning management system (LMS). NEHA will continue to improve theway we develop online resources and teach in a virtual environment as part of this cooperativeagreement.