Poster Session (Nov. 6, 2006, #3261.0 Board 4):

APHA Role in Developing Model Codes for Regulating the Built Environment

Environment Section members, your input is needed on the continuation, future extent and nature of APHA's representation on several national committees responsible for model building codes and safety standards that, when adopted, strongly influence the built environment.  The background is provided below in relation to a poster scheduled for Monday, Nov. 6, on Board 4 at the Annual Meeting.  Having this only presented as a poster is not ideal and will not be effective unless interested APHA members use the opportunity to come to the poster to discuss, with Jake Pauls, how APHA should proceed.  Alternatively, members unable to come to the poster should contact Jake Pauls before, during or shortly after the Boston meeting.

Changes being discussed within the two major organizations responsible for national building model codes and standards in the several months before and after the APHA Annual Meeting are unprecedented in relation to safety of larger buildings.  Many large national organizations are involved in the deliberations and, to an extent not seen before, the media are covering issues such as high-rise building design, regulation and safety among other topics.  A prime example is the PBS NOVA television broadcast on Sept.5, "Building on Ground Zero."  Jake Pauls served as a technical resource and on-screen participant for NOVA on this broadcast as well as for NOVA's prior coverage of the World Trade Center disaster in an Emmy Award winning program in 2002.  (See www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc.) For too long, the built environment has been influenced much more by engineering consultants than by public health experts.  Similarly, public health professionals are too little involved in the political process in which the model codes are adopted by state and local jurisdictions, reducing the chance that model codes are enforced and actually impact the built environment.  Please contribute your ideas for changing this by using the opportunity provided by the poster session described below.

”The presentation reviews the relatively potent influence, on the built environment, of the enforcement of up-to-date requirements for design, construction, maintenance and use of the built environment. For a decade APHA has been represented on the International Code Council Industry Advisory Committee, which provides guidance on policies and model code development procedures ultimately affecting health and safety of the built environment through widely adopted and enforced model building, plumbing, fire and other codes in the United States. For five years, there has been even more intensive APHA representation on nine committees of the National Fire Protection Association, a developer of hundreds of ANSI standards, many influencing health and safety of the built environment in the United States and elsewhere, for example with NFPA's internationally used Life Safety Code. During the years of APHA representation on committees of ICC and NFPA, two major, new model building codes have been produced, published and republished on three-year cycles. With the beginning in 2006 of a new cycle of code development for key NFPA and ICC model building codes (and other model documents), it is timely to assess the effectiveness of having APHA represented on 10 committees largely responsible for technical and policy quality of these documents. Also underlining the importance of such an assessment are impending professional changes by the principal APHA representative (the author) on the NFPA and ICC committees plus the need to better incorporate such representation in the growth of the Built Environment Institute in APHA.”

This session’s learning objectives are:

1.) Identify the two key U.S.-based organizations and the model codes they produce that impact health and safety in the built environment.
2.) Understand how APHA representation on these organizations and committees has influenced their policies and products during the last decade plus their impact on health and safety in the built environment.
3.) Influence, and make informed decisions on, APHA’s future role with such model codes as well as their own professional activities in the development, adoption and enforcement of such codes as part of a comprehensive approach to public health as influenced by the built environment.