ES 4 – Strengthen, Support, and Mobilize

Essential Public Health Service 4: Strengthen, support, and mobilize communities and partnerships to improve health

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Learn how environmental health programs support Essential Public Health Service 4 and public health accreditation.

These activities support Essential Service 4 (partnerships and community engagement).
Public health wheel showing essential service 4 in dark color, with equity at the center.
Essential Public Health Service 4

Essential service 4—strengthen, support, and mobilize communities and partnerships to improve health—is one of the essential services aligned to the Policy Development core function.

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Here are some examples of common activities* that help deliver essential service 4.

Establishing a process to identify and engage with community members and organizations to develop public health solutions to environmental health problems and increase awareness of community environmental health issues. The process could involve organizing community advisory boards or forums to obtain input from community members about environmental health initiatives, programs, and issues affecting the community.

Convening and facilitating coalitions and partnerships among groups and associations (including those not typically considered to be related to environmental health) when undertaking defined environmental health improvement efforts.

These activities connect to PHAB standards.

Environmental health programs also link to and support broader public health initiatives such as public health accreditation. Following are examples of activities that could contribute to accreditation by the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB). Completing these activities does not guarantee conformity to PHAB documentation requirements.

PHAB Standard 4.1: Engage with the public health system and the community in promoting health through collaborative processes.

  • Informing potential partners, including community members, about opportunities for collaboration to address environmental health issues. This input may help identify priority areas for improving environmental health conditions as well as activities to improve the delivery and use of environmental health services.
  • Engaging in collaborative activities with partner organizations (for example, joint community engagement efforts with housing agencies to address lead poisoning prevention).
  • Participating in community health coalitions or partnerships that address health topics related to environmental health, such as housing coalitions or built environment coalitions.

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*Examples are not exhaustive.