132 Annual Meeting Logo - Go to APHA Meeting Page  
APHA Logo - Go to APHA Home Page
Session: Addressing Environmental Health Disparities in Environmental Public Health Tracking
3331.0: Monday, November 8, 2004: 4:30 PM-6:00 PM
Oral
Addressing Environmental Health Disparities in Environmental Public Health Tracking
The significance of environmental factors is increasingly understood as central to public health, in ambient and built environments. Assessment and management of the environmental factors that affect health require acquisition and analysis of data from the environmental and health sectors. In the US, an environmental public health tracking initiative is intended to improve linkages of environmental and health data and assessment of environmental factors contributing to disease. A critical challenge is to develop approaches that identify populations at greatest risk and the environmental factors and combination of factors that are likely to affect such groups. Approaches that can determine whether disparities exist are essential to provide a full picture of the environmental health status of the population and to identify intervention and policy needs. Assessing differences by age, gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and net pollution burden or cumulative risk may lead to insights about areas in which to target attention. This session presents an overview of the many considerations involved in assessing disparities in exposure to important environmental factors. Age, race/ethnicity, and socio economic status, using types of data sources typically available in the US, focusing on resolution of environmental factors to geographic scales compatible with demographic information are all considered. Though limited, such methods can be informative, and in some cases can be enhanced by coordinated consideration of related environmental concentrations, body burdens, and health outcomes.
Learning Objectives: Understand essential elements of environmental public health tracking; Identify major populations of interest; Describe patterns of environmental inequalities do to racial/ethnic and low income populations.
Organizer(s):Nsedu Obot, MPH
Sacoby M. Wilson, MS
Shobha Srinivasan, PHD
Daneen Farrow-Collier
Kimberly Gray, PhD
Moderator(s):Allen Dearry
4:30 PMIntroduction
Allen Dearry, PhD
4:40 PMIntegrating individual and community-level SES data in environmental health tracking: Theoretical and methodological considerations
Rachel Morello-Frosch, PhD, MPH
4:55 PMEnvironmental Burdens of Low Income and Minority Populations and Health Disparities: Implications for Environmental Public Health Tracking  [ Recorded presentation ]
Gilbert C. Gee, PhD, Devon Payne-Sturges, DrPH
5:10 PMAddressing environmental and health disparities in environmental public health tracking initiatives
Amy D. Kyle, PhD MPH, Tracey J. Woodruff
5:25 PMIncorporating race/ethnicity and social and economic status into measures for tracking children’s environmental health
Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH, Amy D. Kyle, PhD MPH, Daniel A. Axelrad
5:40 PMEnvironmental Health Tracking, Will It Make A Difference?  [ Recorded presentation ]
Pam Tau Lee, BS
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement and author's information.
Organized by:Environment
Endorsed by:Community Health Planning and Policy Development
CE Credits:CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing

The 132nd Annual Meeting (November 6-10, 2004) of APHA