It’s National Public Health Week — Looking Back and Moving Forward with Cleaning for Health
April 6–12, 2020 is the 25th annual National Public Health Week (NPHW) brought together by the American Public Health Association (APHA). NPHW is a week set aside to recognize the contribution of public health workers as well as raise awareness of issues that are important to improving public health within the United States.
The theme this year is “looking back, moving forward,” which is particularly relevant given the current COVID-19 pandemic. Each day of NPHW is focused on a health topic that is important to improving U.S. public health and identifying ways to make a difference on each. The daily themes this year are Mental Health (Monday), Maternal and Child Health (Tuesday), Violence Prevention (Wednesday), Environmental Health (Thursday), Education (Friday), Healthy Housing (Saturday) and Economics (Sunday). Here is how the APHA is thinking about each day of NPHW in light of COVID-19: http://www.nphw.org/nphw-2020/covid-19.
In honor of NPHW, I’ve begun to look back and think about the focus of my daily work as a public health liaison. The value of cleaning in public health has never been as clear or as relevant in each of the daily themes. Keeping surfaces clean helps to prevent infections by reducing the spread of germs (or pathogens) from person to person through indirect contact. In turn, this is good for mental health, violence prevention, and helps to create healthier homes and environments.
To bring this to light, we don’t need to look much further than the current COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to social distancing, clean hands and clean surfaces work together to help minimize the spread of this virus, as well as many other germs. With an unprecedented public health and economic impact, COVID-19 reminds us of the importance of infection prevention, particularly as we move forward.
COVID-19 has also highlighted the importance of education for professional cleaners to ensure facilities are cleaned properly to help prevent the spread of illness and protect human health. From choosing the correct product for each cleaning job to knowing the proper process to implement, there is much for cleaning professionals to learn and know to ensure cleaning is done safely and efficiently. The industry has made progress with programs such as AHE’s CHEST, ManageMen’s Janitor University, and ISSA’s Cleaning Management Institute, but cleaning professionals are public health workers who deserve quality education and the utmost gratitude. Cleaning correctly, like any other professional skill, requires time, training, knowledge, and practice.
To help keep industry professionals informed and help them navigate this difficult time, CloroxPro has developed a COVID-19 resource page where cleaning and healthcare professionals can access all our educational resources and tools to respond to COVID-19, relevant blog posts on the latest developments in the pandemic, and webinars.
Overall, I am looking forward to hearing about all the NPHW events this week, and also attending the annual APHA meeting in San Francisco October 24-28 (assuming we are able to gather by then). It is my hope that the important role of maintaining clean indoor and built environments will be highlighted during both these public health events as the benefits of cleaning become amplified with further attention to its importance.
