Expanding Swimming Pool Educational Outreach

NEHA

Expanding Swimming Pool Educational Outreach

Hello everyone and welcome to the presentation "Expanding Swimming Pool Educational Outreach."To ask questions about this presentation, please join the presenter in the networking lounge at the designated time listed on the agenda.I would now like to introduce Adam Holbrook, the Public Health Sanitarium Coordinator at Columbus Public Health.

Yes, my name is Adam Holbrook.I'm with Columbus Public Health.And this presentation kind of is an overview and highlights a program that we did to expand our educational outreach here at Columbus Public Health.And just to give a little background as far as Columbus Public health as a city, we serve the City of Columbus and Worthington.We have a five-member board of health, approximately around 500 staff, 40 public health programs, greater than that.And also we have a main campus and satellite campuses, so around the City of Columbus to serve.

We have a diverse population.Our population is very diverse and, believe it or not, we are the largest city in Ohio.It is the capitol.A lot of people end up saying and believing that, you know, they think about Cleveland and Cincinnati, but actually the city of Columbus is the largest in Ohio.And we're over all the 15th largest, actually, in the United States, with a population of around 835,000 people.So that is a pretty decent size city that we have to serve here.We also, like I mentioned, serve the suburb of Columbus, which is Worthington, Ohio, and they have a population around 13,575, as of the most recent census.

As far as the Columbus Public Health, Columbus Public Health is broke down into our Environmental Health Division.Our Environmental Health Division is broke down into Disease Prevention, and underwater/land protection is where we license our pools and spas, our aquatic facilities, and we end up licensing approximately around 800 facilities in the city of Columbus.

So with that, we do have some challenges.We do face my different challenges being that geographic area that we're in.So with that geographic area we do have seasonal pools.So seasonal pools being the ones that we close down periodically for winter months.So we have to be closed.And we also do some inspections during the wintertime to make sure that our facilities are secure as well.We do have swimming pools that are open year round, so we do have those.So we're always out there inspecting our pools.

Overall though, our hardest issue that we have to deal with is our operators, our operators of these outdoor and indoor swimming aquatic facilities.So we have transient operators, so these operators are -- especially during our summer months they may not be the same ones that are there are the next year.They end up being different ones.And they all have various level of education, and we're always normally dealing with maintenance operators.So maintenance operators, usually their pool is maybe not their highest priority.It's not their highest priority.They're usually worried about getting an air-conditioner working, an air-conditioner working for one of their apartments and things.So it's not their biggest thing to worry about.

But we want to try to highlight those thingsand make sure they understand through our educational programs.So that's what we try to do here at Columbus, is try to focus on our educational programs and try to train these operators to understand the importance of aquatic facility operations and swimming pools.And we've done it in many different ways, as I'll talk about here.

But fortunately here at the City of Columbus we've been fortunate with our facilities.And our facility is actually an old school for the blind, so the picture you kind of see here is a picture of our auditorium.We call it our auditorium, but it looks kind of almost like a church.So we're able to get a lot of people in there.We do different programs as far as environmental health.We do body art.We've had body art facility education.We do our food service education within this room, and then we also have other conference rooms that we do our education in.So we kind of really focused a lot into our education programs.

One of our programs that we've been doing for a long as far as swimming pool operation is our pool and spa safety class.With this class we have offered it for free, so it is a free offering that is a class that ends up lasting approximately about half a day, three to four hours or so that people can come in, operators can come in and just get a general understanding of the swimming pools.And like I said, we've been doing this for a while now.It's been going on since around 2005, and just this past year, in 2016, we have had around 103 registrants in that class.So it's been going on for a while.We've been pretty well constant in those numbers as well.

This course also includes a 36-page workbook with supplemental materials, so we're able to give out supplemental materials during those classes and a very nice workbook that we've worked pretty hard on.And with this course it's very nice that we're able to include the things as far as the requirements with local code.So we really highlight what is the requirements and the minimum basically, the standards, what they need to operate under.And then they leave our course with a certificate saying that they did attend our course.

We do also offer certified pool operator certification from the National Swimming Pool Foundation.So we did start that in 2013, we started offering that course.And since 2013 we have had approximately 236 attendees.And I know as far as a lot of people wouldn't know is that with this accreditation you end up leaving with a five-year certification in swimming pool operation.So this is basically kind of like the gold standard.Many I know as far as food operations, they have a level-one and level-two course, or something like that, in my jurisdictions across the country, and this is kind of our level-two course for people that are really wanting to know more about operations.

With our classes we have always tried to focus on our understanding and wanting to make sure that we're the same page with our operators.We're on the same page with our operators and letting them understand that we both should be there to protect the public from possible safety and health hazards.And we want to also build that good relationship.We want to build that good relationship with our operators so that we're not the unknown person coming out to their facility.We're not an unknown person going through and checking through.So we want to introduce ourselves.And I always let them know that here at Columbus Public Health we're not coming out here with a got-you attitude.We're not going to come out there and say we got you on this violation.We want to be, like I said, focusing on our education.Our education, helping make sure that we keep our swimming pools open.That's what our ultimate goal is in this.

So with all this education that we have done, we still see violations.So we have seen a decrease.We did see a decrease in violations when we really first started doing our certified pool operator's course, and every time we do some more education it's just a matter of trying to get those individuals coming in here.Because in the State of Iowa it isn't a requirement for any type of education, but we still want to be out there giving that and offering that.But as you'll see in this chart we have an average of our violations across our sanitarians that we have out inspecting.

One thing to mention in this is kind of it's not -- if you'll see sanitarians doesn't have as many violations.It's not a matter of that person not doing his job or anything like that.It's a matter of they have areas that are designated throughout the city and this is kind of a reflection of what happens when you have newer swimming pools compared to older swimming pools.Older swimming pools tend to have more violations than newer ones.So there's a lot in the area that sanitarian C was working in that's going to have a lot more newer swimming pools.So that's something to mention with this slide here.

So with that data that we collect, the data that we collect from our violations, we try to also, on top of our education, as far as overall education, we try to produce documents.We try to produce documents that help operators on issues that a lot of violations they're getting.So we try to look at those, and we come up with things.So just like this cyanuric acid factsheet that we came up, because we were seeing a lot of those violations.We were seeing a lot of pools that were having a lot of issues with cyanuric acid, and we wanted to basically give them the sheet that they could take and understand what cyanuric acid is and a little bit more than us trying to describe that out there in the field with them.We could actually give that to them, and they could share that with whoever as well.So we try to do those different things to try to help our operators out.

So with all these different things that we've done, with all these different programs that we have already started, like I said, we still see violations, we still see violations, and we are dedicated to our educational programs, and we started looking at different ways of expanding, expanding our educational outreach a little bit more even.So we kind of found the Dr. R. Neil Lowry Grant and we started looking at this and trying to figure out, okay, we do all these things, but what could we do a little bit more.So with the APSP, Association of Pool and Spa Professionals Dr. R. Neil Lowry Grant, it is a grant that offers $5,000 to a public health official or department who has made outstanding contributions to public health and for recreational water.

So we tried to show -- we knew all the things we had done, so we said, well what could we end up doing with this, and we looked at also what is this grant named at?So we looked at who this was named after, and it was named after, obviously, Dr. R. Neil Lowry, and he was a long-time member of Association of Pool and Spa Professionals Recreational Water Committee, who influenced a lot of different things in the aquatic industry for over 25 years.So that's who it was named after.

And then the Association of Pool and Spa Professionals is the oldest and largest association representing the pool and spa aquatic facilities community.So that was very -- looking at them, we knew there was a long standing relationship with aquatic industry.And they're going to be merged.We found this out after the fact, and they're going to be merged with the National Swimming Pool Foundation.They're in that process right now.And that's who, like I said, we offer our certified pool operator certification through.So we had that relationship with them as well.

So, okay, after looking at all of this, we decided what are we going to do?What more can we do to improve and result in less violations and less closures of swimming pools?Because we want to ultimately keep our swimming pools open.So we started brainstorming.We started brainstorming, trying to figure out what we could do.

So we thought about, okay, we have this course, this free course that we've been doing in-house, and is there a way that we could adapt this course.Could we adapt this course and make it a self-pace course, make it a course that anybody could do just out anywhere and make it self-paced?And then could we integrate in some videos?Could we integrate in some videos into to the existing PowerPoint to help with training instead of just having them just go through a PowerPoint, just we have some type of interactive video or something that we could do?

And then we also wanted a way to try to put in some supplemental materials that we could give out to our operators, like even examples of signs and stuff that are required around the swimming pool.So we wanted to try to figure out a way that we could do that.So we ended up having the idea of creating a flash drive, a flash drive.We came up with a flash drive card, because we seen these around and we thought these were a pretty neat thing to where we could end up customizing these.We could end up putting all the documents that we wanted on here, and then we could also include our logo and Association of Pool and Spa Professionals logo on there of who the funding would be provided by.So we thought this was kind of a pretty innovative deal that we came up with it.

So we put this all together.We ended up putting it all together and putting our proposal and application for the grant, and we ended up proposing that to the Association ofPool/Spa Professionals, and we ended up 2015 at the NEHA AC, we ended up winning that award, and there's our administrator, Keith Krinn, receiving the $5,000 check for getting that award, that grant award.So we won.So this was back around July of 2015, so we ended up coming back, and we knew it was time to get to work.So it was time to get to work.We decided, okay, we found out we won this award, we got the $5,000.But, like I said, we have issues around here.A lot of our swimming pools are seasonal.

So we got the award mid-July, so we were still going through and trying to go through the rest of our outdoor pool season.So we didn't have very much time to try to get any video.So that was the main focus at this point was trying to get some of these videos that we needed.But, like I said, we didn't have much time until we were going to just get some indoor footage.We were just going to get indoor footage and, you know, indoor footage isn't quite as pretty as the scene outdoors during the summer, so we had a little bit of a tough time trying to get some of this started.

But also, before we ended up going out we needed to try to figure out, okay, what are we go toing do?What are we even going to be filming?So we didn't have that down just yet.So we kind of brainstormed a little bit more and created a rough draft of thoughts and topics to cover that we thought would be good for the videos.

So we also had the challenge of trying to figure out who was going to help us with these videos.Our original thought when we did the application, we had an individual in our office that had experience with videography and had a good camera and everything, and we just utilized that person.We were able to pick that person up pretty easily.But unfortunately that person left.That person left and took another job, and we didn't have that person anymore.We actually had two resignations during this process, so the other person was a person that helped out with the application and the whole idea of doing this as well, and then they ended uptaking another job.So we were down a couple people, and we were trying to scramble around who was actually going to be able to do these videos for us.

So we had all this down, but we came up and found out somebody had the great idea, well why don't we use the Columbus TV station CTV, which is our Columbus Government Television.Columbus Government Television, they film things like government meetings, events, and documentaries and talk shows and call-in programs.So we had some contacts from different things that we have tried to do here at the City of Columbus and Columbus Public Health, so we ended up getting in contact with them.Fortunately enough, they agreed to help us out with this project.And later on you will see it was really kind of blessing that they agreed to this, because I think things turned out a whole lot better than it would have if we didn't have them and we were just trying to film it on our own.

So, okay, now we have the idea.We had the idea.We knew what we wanted to kind of be filmed.So we needed an actual script.We needed an actual script of what was going to be read as far as these vignettes, these video vignettes went on.So we needed to have something that was going to be voiced over, that was going to be the voiceover.So we came up with a rough draft, and, you know, us doing the rough draft here as far as sanitarians go and in our office, we were really data driven.We understand a lot of the concepts, a lot the innerworkings of swimming pools, all that, so there was a lot of that's that we had in there, all the information that we wanted.So then we ended up having another person in our office that deals with public information come up with a good, I say, sounds good versions.A sounds good version, that was our final version that really flowed really well, and we were able to look at that and create that for us.

So we came up with, actually, nine total scripts that we needed to get videos for.So we came up with disinfectants, filters and flow, water chemistry, suction outlook compliance, recordkeeping, contamination, safety index, spas, and spray ground.So we had all these scripts together finally, and we knew what we wanted to do, and we kind of, like I said, focused on these areas that we thought were most important, the most important as far as violations go and what we thought were the most education that our operators would need.