The Water Environment Federation (WEF), with support from the US Centers for Disease Control, would like to invite you to attend a free, grant-funded virtual Cross-Sector Awareness Training for Preventing and Controlling Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Disease Threats with a focus on understanding the National Wastewater Surveillance System.

Training will be held via Zoom on September 29, 2021 from 12:30 to 2:00 (Central Daylight Time)

Register here!

MML members will receive 2 CMO elective credits for attending this free virtual event. 

Contact the MML office to let us know you attended this training.

As we have seen from the COVID pandemic, response to an emerging disease requires coordination across different sectors at the federal, state, and local levels. These sectors include public health, healthcare, and emergency services, but also water and wastewater systems—which have played a unique health-related role during the pandemic by leading wastewater surveillance efforts to track SARS-CoV-2. Because emerging and re-emerging infectious disease threats are a feature of human life, it is important to understand the interdependency of these sectors so that we can build sustained, resilient, cross-sector partnerships to efficiently respond to, or even prevent, future outbreaks.

The goal of this workshop is to increase awareness of the interdependencies between the water and wastewater, public health, healthcare, and emergency services sectors. While there are many such cross-sector interdependencies, wastewater-based surveillance is an excellent example of how the different sectors can work together toward a common goal. This training aims to build partnerships across sectors to improve understanding and application of wastewater surveillance. Therefore, members from water/wastewater, public health, healthcare, and emergency services organizations from the entire state of Mississippi are encouraged to attend

Topics covered will include:

• The role and scope of the water and wastewater, health care and public health, and emergency services sectors and how they are interdependent on each other
• What the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) is, including:
  • The goals and structure of the system
  • How NWSS-related activities are funded
  • How it’s possible to get involved, whether you are a wastewater utility or a public health entity
  • How the wastewater data are being used to inform public health actions

This training is a condensed version of a longer, free training available in WEF’s Learning Center.

This virtual event is being hosted by:

Mississippi Water Environment Association

Mississippi Engineering Society

American Water Works Association

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QUESTIONS regarding the trainings can be directed to nwbe@wef.org.