Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #109565

Lynda Odofin, DVM MPH¹, Zimra Gordon, DVM, MPH², Peter M. Rabinowitz, MD, MPH¹, Joshua Dein, VMD³, Daniel Chudnov, MS⁴, and Matthew Wilcox, MS⁵. (1) Yale Occupational and Environmental Medicine Program, Yale University School of Medicine, 135 College Street, 3rd Floor, New Haven, CT 06510, 203-785-6440, sentinelstudies@yale.edu, (2) Rippowam Animal Hospital, 888 High Ridge Road, Stamford, CT 06905, (3) USGS National Wildlife Health Center, 6006 Schroeder Road, Madison, WI 53711, (4) Yale Center for Medical Informatics, Yale Shool of Medicine, 300 George Street, Suite 501, New Haven, CT 06510, (5) Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT 06510

Despite widespread recognition of the potential for animals to provide early warning of human environmental health hazards (i.e.: the concept of the ‘canary in a coal mine'), there are few evidence-based protocols for the incorporation of animal sentinel data into public health decision-making. Concepts such as “One-Medicine” stress the overlap between human health and non-human animal health, but communication barriers and knowledge gaps persist between researchers and practitioners in the animal health and human health fields. As efforts expand to create better surveillance systems for animal disease events, it will become increasingly important to overcome such barriers. We report on a National Library of Medicine-funded project to create a web-accessible database of studies of animals as sentinels of human environmental health hazards, both toxic and infectious. The project represents a collaborative effort of veterinarians, human health clinicians, toxicologists, vector ecologists, and field biologists. The database, freely available to the public health community via the Internet, facilitates evidence-based searching for linkages between animal sentinel events and human environmental health threats. Examples from the database will be presented, including evidence-based reviews of animals as sentinels of biological and chemical terrorist agents as well as methodologies to link human health and animal health data.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand concepts of evidence-based linkages between animal and human health regarding animal sentinel health events.
• Understand current knowledge and communication barriers to developing such linkages
• Understand electronic database strategies to overcome these barriers

Keywords: Environmental Health Hazards, Outbreaks

Related Web page: canarydb.med.yale.edu

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.