Environmental Tracking in 2013

Brief Summary

Environmental Tracking in 2013.  L. Balluz, , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA;

BRIEF SUMMARY: The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (NEPHTN) is an ongoing collection, integration, analysis, and interpretation of data about environmental hazards, exposure to environmental hazards, and health effects potentially related to exposure to environmental hazards. Public health officials and policymakers need timely, integrated environmental and health data at the federal, state, and local levels to make critical decisions about where to focus resources and interventions. CDC’s Tracking Program is meeting that need. In 2013 tracking is expanding its activities to include: (1) an enhanced Web-based system will allow the user to obtain more robust information by quering and simultaneously displaying up to four different environmental and health measures on a single page. For example an annual, county-based query for a state involving measures of air quality, asthma hospitalizations, poverty rates, and smoking prevalence; (2) a track for college-level instruction on environmental public health with particular emphasis on using the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network as an essential tool of the practice. The objectives of the track are to a) Increase knowledge of fundamental aspects of environmental public health and Tracking Network, and b) develop skill at using the Tracking Network to solve public health problems; and (3) advance Environmental Public Health Science and Research by describing trends and associations of health and environmental data with main focus on areas for which timely and locally relevant environmental data with established connection to human health is available. Examples of ongoing work include evaluating association between particulate matter 2.5 (Pm2.5) and low birth weight, and pm2.5 and heart disease.