 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Robert A. Venezia, DrPH, Office of Earth Science, NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, S.W., Washington, DC 20546, 202-358-1324, rvenezia@hq.nasa.gov
NASA’s mission to understand and protect our home planet is implemented by the Earth Science Enterprise with an annual budget of approximately $1.5 billion invested annually in orbital Earth-observing instrumentation, advanced communications architectures, and high speed computing. Over the past two decades, NASA researchers have successfully used these remote sensing assets to study relationships between certain diseases and environmental factors. With the creation of its Public Health Applications Program, NASA began focusing its infectious disease and environmental health-related research and development activities toward operational uses by the public health practice community, i.e., surveillance. NASA's Public Health Applications Program is a Headquarters-coordinated group of agency Programs with capabilities, expertise and strong interests in addressing national public health objectives. NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California; Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi, and; the NASA-sponsored Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center at Columbia University in Nyack, New York, all have coordinated efforts under the Public Health Applications Program. In order to apply NASA technology to public health surveillance issues, these program elements will engage in a dialogue between Earth system scientists and engineers and the architects of the Nation’s surveillance systems. The goal of this dialogue is to match NASA capabilities with epidemiologic requirements. This short talk will describe the goals of the Public Health Applications Program and its current investments in support of specific surveillance systems, and will offer a vision for future partnerships with the public health practice community.
Learning Objectives:
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.