University of California, Davis
August 7-11, 2005
COMMENTS
 | The staff was very helpful and the whole conference was very well organized. Food was great everyday. |
| Food was excellent, but servings were a bit small especially for people sitting near the front. |
| Could have been much more detailed/in-depth. |
| The program was well designed and organized. |
| Great course! Would like to see more take-home literature. |
| I really enjoyed the course and will utilize a lot of the subject matter covered in the class in my work. |
| This course needs to focus more on the pesticide issues may need to cut down on the days to 3 (change focus on talks.) |
| Although I had a good working relationship with my health dept. counterparts, this improved it. I think however that many of the pesticide presentations were review for the pesticide people but new for some of the health people. This is ok, but more presentations on health agencies would have been good, too. As always certain speakers were better than others I particularly appreciated Carl Winters and Dan Sudakin, George Tsongas was good, too. Including more EPA stuff would be good. States see the "real world" more often than EPA does. Scenarios were realistic and useful exercise. |
| Excellent mix of ag and health. |
| Overall I think it was a good course. Learn about pesticide and importance of regulations and labels. |
| Very well designed with good exercises, very good presenters. |
| Wonderful course, great information, fantastic opportunity. |
| I commend you for balancing the course for the various types of regulators. Bringing people from state, fed, and health backgrounds served as a great opportunity to network and learn what others are doing. |
| Thank you!! |
| The voluminous information from presenters was valuable but some could streamline the presentation down to "hot points" leave more time for discussion? |
| Many of the people are on other "times" snack at mid morning would be great. Also fruit type snacks. Put the presentations all in order, including the States. |
| Would have liked to have gone to the rice growing areas before touring the water treatment facility. Would have been nice to see some of the diverse agriculture of the area. |
| I am not sure how to shorten the course length; however it might be possible to pace ~90% of these great presentations and talks into 4 days. There may be some discussed pesticide illness surveillance and outreach efforts. |
| Excellent overview handled at the right level of depth for nearly all topics. I would refer other folks to this. |
| Very successful! Great presenters. Great topics. This was an awesome refinement from last year. Scenarios were amazingly well reserved and made the course more active and more enjoyable. Suzanne and John: you rock! Awesome, awesome job. Bringing this together the way you did and getting the people you did for presenters. The work and effort put forward by you two makes this an awesome program. Having got to attend a second time, this time I got to know my counterpart more than I did last time. I think many factors went into that. Nothing was too much, the mix was good. I can not think of anything glaring that needs to be fixed. Tweaking the scenarios a little and in my mind this program could not get much better. Thank you infinitely for letting me be involved. Keep me in mind for any future work. You are a complete joy to work with! |
| Extremely well organized with exceptional accommodating arrangements. |
| The facility and arrangements for food and courses were excellent. I very much appreciate John and Suzanne for inviting me to this course. I enjoyed this course very much. |
| Excellent courses, face to face dialogue was great. |
| Food was excellent (almost too much) and the course was well organized and a great setting. |
| Fantastic! Really impressive thank you!! |
| This was a great course. I formed the material presented informative and very useful for my program. |
WHAT WERE THE STRENGTHS OF THIS COURSE? WHAT DID YOU VALUE MOST?
| Excellent opportunity to mix with State officials. |
| The interaction between States was very valuable and the courses that talked about risk communication and outreach. |
| Great speakers; lots of expertise and resources Ill have many contracts for future references. |
| The breakout scenarios were beneficial, but the presentation on outreach/literacy reinforced my literacy concerns for non-English speaking workers. |
| Good variety of topics. |
| Speakers diversity mix of participants course organization; camaraderie. |
| As always, interactions between participants was particularly valuable |
| Presenters were great. |
| Most speakers were very knowledgeable in the topics they presented. |
| Ability to work with my cohort from my state. |
| Brought state agencies together to share goals and objectives should separate health and ag agencies on first data and provide basic training on the other agency. |
| Continue with the breakout sessions the more dialogue you have between the players the more they can carry back. |
| Interactions with people from different parts of the country. |
| Good planning, run well, good speakers. |
| The opportunity to do this for 5 day. The breadth of topic areas. |
| Risk communication/mold more time for Carl food safety also risk/benefit. Toxicology, individual reports, and breakout problem sessions provide a work/break-out session on how-to communicate with vocal/chemophobic individuals, all speakers were great!! Get rid of the bell!! |
| Pesticides (real risks), acute and chronic pesticide illness, pesticide surveillance, mold problems, mosquito vector diseases; pesticide and safety and risk communication were the topics, I enjoyed the most. |
| Small class size that permitted interactions P/A, relaxed setting-atmosphere. |
| Camaraderie and meeting so many people that do what I do, basically information resources. |
| Opportunity to interact, effective knowledgeable speakers, humor! |
| The interaction and lovely discussions between states and agencies and sharing of information. |
HOW COULD THIS COURSE BE IMPROVED?
| Make sure the time slots are appropriate etc. the mold talk was too long. Some pest/EPA, Risk Communication sessions were too short. |
| Shorter presentations after lunch 11/2 hour is too long to keep interest after eating! |
| Consider a separate public health 101 for ag people and one on pesticides for public health people, therefore presenters are not "preaching to the choir" the session on pesticides 101 could cover the top 10 pesticides of concern for public health. Provide the common name, active ingredient, use, and exposure (common). |
| The session on public health could cover basic terminology, pesticide issues in public health. Then put the teams together and allow them to discuss what was presented and allow them to discuss what was presented and question what occurs in their State. |
| Shorten presentations and stress that speakers should complete their talk/slides. |
| Mechanics of hearing participants seating. |
| More break-out sessions. |
| Some of the lectures could have been shorter and other could have had a little more time. |
| Small point. Have participants sit in "horse shoe" arrangement so everybody can see everybody. |
| Longer breakout sessions, more breakout sessions break-up lectures more. |
| Thanks for advising us to bring sweaters but it was still cold!! |
| In the end, it appears there has been a lot of thought put into this to give a good cross section of all disciplines and their authority. |
| A breakout midweek perhaps lengthen the field trip. |
| Shorter number of days, maybe allow ½ day to allow attendees to tour the area, or include it during the field trip, start earlier end earlier in the day to allow attendees to be a tourist in the late afternoon evening. |
| I will take 90% of this info and put it to work everyday at work. I would highly recommend this course to any state/tribal pesticide/health program person. |
| Have a live speaker for antimicrobials. Do a talk on risk comm. Do a case study on drift into home for agricultural operations. Start new initiatives with better misunderstanding of the overview increase confidence we are on the right track. |
| Look into costs for arrival on Sunday; leave on Friday. Current day 5 is grueling. |
| If you provide some case studies on different topics which will be helpful. |
| Perhaps shorten the length. |
| Some of the speakers could be improved. Topics were timely. |
| I like the breakout idea but all 3 were a lot (more info on degradate health effects) alike what about doing one with risk communication with an emphasis on coordinating messages between agencies we should have the graduation dinner on the second to last night so we can fly out on the last night, more risk com info. |
| Include a portion in the afternoon (1 or 2) for visits to interesting sites and land marks in the area. |
HOW WILL THIS COURSE HELP YOU IN YOUR JOB/CAREER?
| It was very interesting to hear what state officials are doing. |
| All of the information was very valuable because it gives me a new perspective on decision making communication. |
| Much of the info was familiar but it was a good refresher, various responses from other agencies Re: WNV and how to handle public concern was timely. |
| Better relationship with my public health counterpart. |
| Need to communicate better w/ health dept. |
| Will help me to increase outreach efforts to increase awareness of pesticide and health. |
| Better coordination with my health agency, better response to complaints/incidents. |
| TNC (too numerous to count). |
| Taking back some great resources and contacts. |
| Some of the information I have gained will be used as soon as I get back most of it is about communication rather than actual presented information. |
| It gave me a better understanding of the public health aspect at the pesticide mix, not just regulatory. |
| Absolutely!! It will broaden my knowledge and open innumerable sources/contacts for consultation. |
| I have learned a lot of new information on different aspects of pesticides related to human health which will be helpful in answering lots of questions of public at my department. |
| Communication with SLA, EPA, and other States. |
| Actually it rejuvenates me. So many ideas and possibilities to improve my performance. |
| Very helpful. This course has increased my knowledge, awareness and appreciation of my job responsibilities. |
WHAT OTHER PROGRAMS WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE US OFFER?
| Risk communication outreach efforts. |
| New pesticide devices and labeling issues. |
| I would like to take the water course. |
| Water quality and performance measures (guess who?) |
| Writing MOUs, etc. (coop agreements), spanning distances. |
| Could use role playing with case study give people their roles ahead of time. |
| Examples to some real exposures to pesticides and health risk assessments. |
| Mosquito control issues. |
| Some GMO stuff |
| Highly comprehensive; just some basic improvement in term of focus of the existing courses. |