| Sumario: | The National Association of County and City Health Officials has developed a pilot process for assessing community environmental health needs. Called the Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE-EH), this process is highly participatory and community driven. Delaware County, Ohio, is one of 10 sites in the United States field-testing the process. Reported here are the methodology, challenges, strengths, weaknesses, and initial results of this field test. Although PACE-EH requires considerable investment, internal capacity, and access to technical support, it is an effective and gratifying process because it involves stakeholders proposing solutions to environmental health issues. Environmental health divisions that embrace the challenge of listening to their communities in setting environmental priorities and strategies must be willing to shift operational paradigms, since the results of such collaboration may not conveniently fit into classically established environmental health programs and services. The authors suggest that other communities may benefit from the PACE-EH methodology in assessing and resolving their environmental health problems.
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