by Michele Late

A few years ago in Wisconsin, environmental public health workers noticed something unusual. Following through on an inquiry from a resident, workers looked at monitoring data and found that a local factory was emitting high levels of a potentially harmful chemical.

The factory was in compliance with permit requirements. But once faced with the findings, the owners decided to change their manufacturing process and eliminate the emissions, thereby removing a possible environmental threat to the community.

For the past few years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been funding state environmental public health tracking programs, which allow workers to better monitor environmental health issues, such as those related to air pollution. Photo by Timothy Hughes, courtesy iStockphoto

Environmental public health workers in Wisconsin were able to collect the data and make the connection thanks to a state pilot project funded through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under its National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, CDC has been providing grants for the past four years to states so that they can improve surveillance of environmental health.

The CDC program, which has provided millions of dollars in grants to states and academic centers since its creation, is an outgrowth of a 2000 report that found the United States is facing an environmental health gap. While the public commonly assumes that state and national health officials are regularly collecting data on environmental hazards and linking them to disease, the Pew Environmental Health Commission report found that the nation had a "critical" lack of basic information that could provide such insights. The report recommended that a nationwide tracking program be created, and in 2002, Congress began funding the CDC program.

CDC and numerous federal, state and local partners are now focusing their efforts on developing a nationwide environmental health tracking network. The network, which is set to go live in 2008, would provide access to consistent data and measures and help scientists, policy-makers and communities make better decisions concerning the health of the public. The network will also help strengthen the science that links environmental factors and diseases such as cancer, asthma and heart disease, which is currently lacking.

The bottom line will be more information for people who make decisions and take action on environmental public health issues, according to Michael McGeehin, PhD, MSPH, director of the Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects within CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

"When public health is looking at issues like this, it needs solid, valid surveillance data," McGeehin told The Nation’s Health. "We don’t have that right now."

A national environmental public health tracking network will also mean that more states will be able to realize some of the same sort of successes that have been accomplished in Wisconsin, which was one of the first 17 states funded through the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program. The effort has allowed state workers to collect data on environmental hazard exposure that can be used to analyze cancer risk among children as well as air toxicity data that can be linked to asthma or respiratory diseases.

A crucial component of Wisconsin’s work has been building partnerships both within and beyond the state’s borders. In fact, the state has cooperated with Maine and New York — two states that have also received funding through the tracking program — to gather air quality data that can be compared and contrasted between the states and create software so that other states can implement their own such programs.

As part of the environmental public health tracking efforts to make communities healthy for children and families, organizers are busy developing a nationwide tracking network, which would provide acccess to a wealth of data on environments and disease. Photo by Andrea Gingerich, courtesy iStockphoto

"I think it is the appropriate way to do environmental public health, when things are being monitored," Bekkadal told The Nation’s Health. "We’re really working together to make it happen."

Creating a network that will allow sharing, comparison and analysis of environmental health data is "critically important," at both the state and local level, according to Pat Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which has been supporting the tracking program since it began.

While information on topics such as air and water pollution will be helpful to health workers working to design public health interventions, a network would also be able to offer expanded data on issues such as land use and environmental health equity, he noted.

"The better we are in determining the connections between environmental factors and health conditions, diseases and illnesses, the stronger we make the connection," Libbey told The Nation’s Health.

A nationwide tracking network could also help collect surveillance data on U.S. climate change, which has been projected to have negative implications for health. While the network is not specifically designed for climate change tracking, "when it’s in place and when it’s functioning, it will be an excellent tool," said CDC’s McGeehin.

Planning for the network has been under way for some time, including support from academic research centers funded through CDC. Among the centers that are working to build the network is the Johns Hopkins Center for Excellence in Environmental Public Health Tracking in Baltimore, which is providing technical and research support. The center is facilitating an upcoming CDC report that will examine key environmental health indicators and look at the linkages between health conditions such as asthma and cancer.

While public health professionals will be able to use data that comes out of the environmental public health tracking efforts, in the end, the average U.S. resident will see the benefits, according to Beth Resnick, MPH, associate director of the Johns Hopkins center. People who are ill will be able to tell whether it is related to their environment, and Americans will be able to keep themselves and their families safe, she said.

"The concept of a tracking network is sorely needed," Resnick told The Nation’s Health.

APHA is also supporting the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program. Earlier this year, APHA created "Keeping Track, Promoting Health…Connecting the Dots," a CDC book targeted at policy-makers that documents the importance of the program and its successes to date. The Association is also supporting legislation that will soon be introduced in Congress to establish the network and fund further grants to states.

For more information on the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program or the nationwide network, visit www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking.