New Mexico Environmental Public Health Tracking Network

The relationships between environmental risk factors and health outcomes are complex and remain largely unknown. There is a need for a more comprehensive approach to the collection and analysis of noninfectious disease data and the integration of that information with environmental hazard and biomonitoring data. The availability of geocoded data in a standardized tracking network will enable the community and its public health professionals to begin to understand possible associations between the environment and adverse health effects.

The purpose of New Mexico as a Tracking State and the CDC's Environmental Public Health Tracking (Tracking) Program is to provide information from a state network of integrated health and environmental data that drives public health action. The Tracking Networks, state and national, integrate the three distinct components of hazard monitoring, exposure, and health effects surveillance into an informatics network which provides valid information on environmental exposures and adverse health conditions and the possible spatial and temporal relations between them. Geospatial analysis tools utilize data from this network and may identify areas and populations likely to be affected by environmental contamination and provide information on the health and environmental status of communities. These data can be used to drive public health policy and interventions that ultimately will reduce the burden of adverse health effects on the public.