Federal Funding Delivered For Environmental Public Health Tracking System

HARTFORD — The Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) has been awarded approximately $700,000 annually for the next five years from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to expand its Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) system. Connecticut was one of only 16 states to receive funding through a competitive grant application.

“This funding will help us build a statewide integrated environmental and public health information system that will allow public health officials to respond to potential health problems related to the environment,” stated DPH Commissioner J. Robert Galvin, MD, MPH.

The new funding will allow DPH to begin integrating existing health and environmental data systems to track the relationship between environmental hazards and their potential impact on public health. The first measures that will be linked include hospitalizations for asthma, hospitalizations for myocardial infarction, ozone and particulate matter hazards or exposures, data/information on key water contaminants, and data/information from at least two of the following data sources or tracking systems: birth defects, cancer, child blood lead levels, or vital statistics.

The environment plays an important role in human development and health. Researchers have linked exposures to some environmental hazards with specific diseases.

Examples include the link between exposure to asbestos and lung cancer and between exposure to lead and decreased mental function in children. Other links, however, remain unproven, such as the suspected link between exposure to disinfectant byproducts (for example, chlorine from showerheads) and bladder cancer.

Environmental public health tracking is the 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. The goal of environmental public health tracking is to protect communities by providing information to federal, state, and local agencies.

These agencies, in turn, will use this information to plan, apply, and evaluate public health actions to prevent and control environmentally related diseases.

The department’s EPHT efforts have previously been focused on planning and partnership building. DPH convened an EPHT Planning Consortium to develop recommendations and suggestions for planning and implementing a tracking network in Connecticut.

The consortium’s recommendations were compiled in the 2005 report, “A New Strategic Direction: A Plan to Implement Environmental Public Health Tracking in Connecticut.” Visit www.dph.state.ct.us/Publications and click on “Environmental Public Health Tracking Report” to view the report.

In September 2000, the Pew Environmental Health Commission released a report titled “America’s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network” that highlighted the need to critically monitor the linkage between environmental exposure and chronic disease and other adverse health outcomes in the United States. This report led to the CDC funding states to plan for and develop environmental public health tracking efforts in the United States.