The Handwashing Leadership Forum® is an invitation-only alliance of best practice advocates who consistently demonstrate leadership and commitment to lowering the risks of foodborne and person-to-person illness.
Members agree that “by thinking and working together we can replace risk with integrated solutions. We can fill the gaps in the science of hand hygiene, good gloving, and the cleanliness of high-touch surfaces.”
A message from the Forum …
We look beyond our individual products to change food worker behaviors. Our metrics for success are increased hand hygiene, lowered rates of foodborne illness and minimal operator risk. Our joint “applied science” approach has demonstrated that food workers will actually wash their hands and change their gloves…frequently! They will also embrace clean-as-you-go surface cleaning once they understand their role and are provided best practice products and protocols.
The Handwashing Leadership Forum’s role is to support operators and regulators already searching for solutions to the ever-growing threat of foodborne illness. Poor handwashing plus poor gloving now add up to the number one unresolved risk factor in foodborne illness.
Reaching the many disciplines required to effectively manage the risk of foodborne illness requires an integrated approach. Owners and operating executives need to understand the risks more clearly in order to build, equip, hire, train and operate kitchens and food plants with handwashing stations budgeted for success. Kitchen consultant/designers, managers, workers and regulators must all embrace the hand hygiene priority and operate from a common template.
The Handwashing Leadership Forum®, under the integrating methodology of Handwashing For Life, strives to provide the voice of applied science, leadership, and innovation. It seeks to continuously lead the advancement of hand hygiene-related food safety via the Conference for Food Protection.
Founding Members
Twenty years ago, a group of leading handwashing advocates gathered to address the need to enhance handwashing in foodservice, healthcare, schools, and institutions in general. They all agreed the technical prowess of an integrated approach could well provide some new options unachievable by a single technology. This energy birthed the Handwashing For Life® alliance.
These companies opened up their engineering and chemical laboratories to work together. Today’s register of current allies includes these Founding Members.
Chicago Faucets
Purell® Hand Sanitizer
Monitoring Research & Development
Electronic handwash monitoring has emerged as the “single-most” effective measure to enhance hand hygiene and save lives in away-from-home environments. The technology choices have moved fast as blue tooth, color change indicator, RFID, and voice recognition became of age.
The operator incentive to invest in these has been tempered by the short-term costs. Now Risk Management and Finance have gotten involved to illustrate the savings beyond the installation period. Verified handwashing is just now becoming of age. Some operators have even seen the opportunity to engage their clients, adding verified handwashing to their Customer Loyalty Program.
Indiana University Health System
University of Chicago Medical Center
Exploratory
This category of Handwashing For Life® Forum Membership is reserved for new solutions, largely in the Electronic Handwash Monitoring category. These companies have serious investment and prototypes showing promise in limited trials or entering the USA with its success demonstrated in other counties.
CloudClean
Academic Members
Academia is a vast source of innovative thinking. A range of Universities have been invited to join our alliance based on their past successes and current interest in enhanced away-from-home handwashing.
University of Houston – Hilton School of Restaurant Management
Certification Members
COVID 19 has permanently raised the customers' cleanliness expectations when dining away from home. Operators are responding with added cleaning protocols, emphasizing those actions which build trust quickly. Numeric indicators are being added to set measurable standards and reward success.
Success can range from verified employee compliance as in the case of Crushed Red to operational safety grades as awarded by professional groups.
