Environmental Health Guide

The New Hampshire APPLETREE Program – run jointly between NHDES, the Division of Public Health Services at New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, and the Dartmouth Cancer Center’s Community Outreach and Engagement team – have developed training resources to support local leaders that are responding to community environmental health concerns.

In November 2021, our project team met with town and legislative stakeholders to better understand the types of concerns they hear from their communities and the resources that could be helpful to them. We identified training topic areas and assembled the New Hampshire Environmental Health Guide (NH-EHG) – a table of resources designed to help legislators, city and town health officers, municipal officials, administrators, and other stakeholders find the appropriate State resource or agency to address environmental concerns raised by their community. We have also developed three trainings that will be available virtually, live and posted online on the New Hampshire APPLETREE webpage.

Training 1: NH Environmental Health Resource Guide (NH-EHG) Introduction introduces the audience to partners available to assist them (e.g., NHDES, APPLETREE, DHHS), and reviews an example of how to use the NH-EHG.

Training 2: Cancer Concerns in the Community outlines the principles that underlie cancer concern investigations and describes an approach to use if someone in the community raises a concern about the numbers of cancers in their neighborhood.

Training 3: Understanding Environmental Contamination and Risk introduces the audience to environmental contamination, environmental health hazards, and provides information on risk communication and risk perception relative to understanding and communicating the risk of environmental contaminants.

Contact New Hampshire APPLETREE by email at robert.thistle@des.nh.gov or phone (603) 271-1417.