Improving Food Safety through the Health Education Liaison Program (HELP) (20m lecture)

Major or critical violations found during inspections are significant risk factors contributing to foodborne illness outbreaks in food service facilities, and are clearly an imminent hazard to public health and safety. Even worse are facilities that perform poorly time after time. The County of San Bernardino Department of Public Health Division of Environmental Health has implemented a proactive Food Safety Health Education Liaison Program (HELP). Low scoring facilities are referred by their inspectors to this program. This same service is offered to facilities that would like to improve their grade and new operators wanting to understand Health and Safety expectations. The consultation is performed at no cost and provides education and strategies for food facility operators and staff to reduce the occurrence of practices that lead to foodborne illness outbreaks. Data analysis for low scoring facilities that participated in Food Safety HELP has shown that average facility inspection scores have increased 5 points and critical violations contributing to foodborne illness have decreased 37% at their next routine inspection. A food facility that demonstrated the most drastic improvement went from a score of 73 (C grade) before HELP and increased to a score of 90 (A grade) on their next unannounced routine inspection. HELP has been received well by industry. As a result, food operations in San Bernardino have become safer and the public better protected from the risk of foodborne illness.