Retail Food Safety Consultation Service: Applying Behavior Change Models to Incre

The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department (LLCHD) Food Safety Program's primary goal is preventing foodborne illness through a comprehensive program based on the 2009 FDA Food Code and on FDA's Retail Program Standards. LLCHD retail food inspection trend data revealed that violations of key risk factors for foodborne illness had stabilized and a subset of establishments continued to have significantly higher numbers of Critical Item Violations. While many regulatory programs have worked with retail food industry to implement Active Managerial Controls (AMC), success has been limited. The goal of LLCHD's proposal is to reduce foodborne illness originating from retail food establishments and the outcome will be fewer illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths. LLCHD's objective is to strengthen AMCs of food safety at the retail level through implementing an innovative Retail Food Safety Consultation Service utilizing a two-part behavioral change intervention strategy. In part one, LLCHD will engage Food Protection Managers in a community- based social marketing initiative based on a scientifically proven community behavior change model developed by environmental psychologist McKenzie-Mohr - Fostering Sustainable Behavior Community-Based Social Marketing. LLCHD will coordinate a "Food Managers for Excellence" Task Force, whose charge will be to apply this model to increase the implementation of AMCs in retail food establishments. In part two, a Retail Food Safety Consultant will provide intensive on-site consultative intervention to Food Protection Managers in the poorest performing retail food establishments, resulting in the implementation of AMCs for FDA's "Five Key Risk Factors" for foodborne illness. LLCHD will collaborate with the retail food industry, State agencies, FDA, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in this project. This proposal provides a unique opportunity for FDA to test two proven behavior change models that have had limited application in retail food regulatory programs. If successful, this model will change the field of practice and provide new strategies to achieve a higher level of retail food safety across the U.S., reducing foodborne illness.