NACCHO Awards Local Health Departments $356,000 for Wastewater Monitoring, a Useful Foodborne Illness Surveillance Tool
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The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has awarded $356,000 to local health departments across the country for wastewater monitoring efforts to track disease trends and emerging public health threats in their communities.
Wastewater monitoring can be a useful tool for foodborne illness outbreak surveillance. For example, in a 2024 study, Penn State University researchers successfully isolated Salmonella from wastewater samples and linked them to clinical isolates from an existing foodborne illness outbreak. The research was guided by Edward G. Dudley, Ph.D., who is featured on Episode 191 of the Food Safety Matters podcast, in which he talks about the study and provides additional details about the science of wastewater monitoring for foodborne illness surveillance. Listen to that episode here.
Additionally, in another 2024 study led by the California Department of Public Health, researchers demonstrated moderate-to-strong correlations between wastewater data and norovirus outbreak data, concluding that wastewater surveillance is a useful tool for local health departments pursuing norovirus outbreak investigations.
NACCHO is an organization that represents the more than 3,300 local governmental health departments across the U.S. The group’s Wastewater Monitoring Mentorship Program, now in its fourth year, connects mentee local health departments that are in the early stages of developing a wastewater monitoring program with mentor local health departments that have demonstrated experience in utilizing wastewater monitoring. Funds are awarded to the selected mentor and mentee health departments to help them expand their wastewater monitoring efforts.
The 2025 cohort of the mentorship program represents 16 health departments across nine states, with twelve of these health departments serving rural jurisdictions. The project is set to conclude on July 31, 2025.
The five mentor awardees are:
- Andrews County Health Department, Andrews, Texas ($25,000)
- Boston Public Health Commission, Boston, Massachusetts ($25,000)
- Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, Lincoln, Nebraska ($30,500)
- Northeast Texas Public Health District, Tyler, Texas ($25,000)
- San Mateo County Health, San Mateo, California ($30,500).
The 11 mentee awardees are:
- Anchorage Health Department, Anchorage, Alaska ($20,000)
- Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health, Mason City, Iowa ($20,000)
- City of Laredo Health Public Health, Laredo, Texas ($20,000)
- County of San Diego Public Health Laboratory, San Diego, California ($20,000)
- Dent County Health Center, Salem, Missouri ($20,000)
- Harris County Public Health, Houston, Texas ($20,000)
- Hidalgo County Health and Human Services Department, Edinburg, Texas ($20,000)
- Lewis County Health Department, Weston, West Virginia ($20,000)
- Nevada County Public Health Department, Grass Valley, California ($20,000)
- Riverside County Public Health Laboratory, Riverside, California ($20,000)
- Union County Health Department, Marysville, Ohio ($20,000).
Since 2022, NACCHO has granted more than $500,000 in funding to local health departments to implement and expand localized wastewater monitoring infrastructure. NACCHO’s 2024 mentorship program report, featuring best practices from past cohorts of the mentorship program, can be found here.
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