 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Amy D. Kyle, PhD MPH, Environmental Health Sciences Division, University of California Berkeley, School of Public Health, 322 Cortland Ave, PMB-226, San Francisco, CA 94110-5536, 510 642 8847, adkyle@socrates.berkeley.edu, Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH, Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 75 Hawthorne Street (SPE-1), San Francisco, CA 94105, Daniel A. Axelrad, Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, US Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Mail Code 1809, Washington, DC 20460, and John Balmes, MD, School of Public Health, Division of Environmental Health Sciences, University of California at Berkeley, MC#7360, Berkeley, CA 94720.
Environmental public health tracking is being developed through collaborative efforts of state and federal health and environment agencies, research institutions, and stakeholders. The goal is to make better use of existing data and obtain new data to characterize environmental contaminants and their effects on human populations, with an eye toward reducing such impacts. As part of a project to develop measures of children’s environmental health and through the work of a Center for Environmental Public Health Tracking, we assessed data sources and developed measures to contribute to better understanding of relationships between environmental factors and health, specifically assessing changes over time, by geographic area, by race/ethnicity, and by socio economic status. Some of the lessons learned may be informative for the broader question of how to develop environmental public health tracking. We identify eight areas, which we call framework issues, to be addressed. They are to define: a conceptual approach to understanding relationships between environmental agents and health outcomes; the purposes and questions to be answered through tracking; audiences whose information needs are to be met; specific topic areas to be addressed within the conceptual model selected; evaluation and selection of data sources or surrogates for the data elements selected for each topic area; methods to be used to represent selected data sources in an informative way; implications of the selected purposes and information needs; and links to policy actions or interventions. These framework issues will be further elucidated and illustrated in the presentation.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Environmental Health, Surveillance
Related Web page: EHTracking.berkeley.edu
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: I receive funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control to support this work.