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American Public Health Association
133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition
December 10-14, 2005
Philadelphia, PA
APHA 2005
 
3098.0: Monday, December 12, 2005 - 11:24 AM

Abstract #115929

Tracking health and the environment: A pilot test of environmental public health indicators

Erin K. Dreyling, BA1, Elizabeth J. Dederick, MA, MHS2, Ramya Chari, MPH2, Beth A. Resnick, MPH3, Kristen Malecki, MPH4, Thomas A. Burke, PhD, MPH3, and Roni Neff, ScM5. (1) Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N. Broadway 7th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21205, 443-287-6533, edreylin@jhsph.edu, (2) Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N. Broadway, Room 484, Baltimore, MD 21205, (3) Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 624 N. Broadway, Room 484, Baltimore, MD 21205, (4) Health Policy and Management/Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University, 624 N. Broadway, Room 484, Baltimore, MD 21205, (5) Health Policy and Management/Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, 624 N. Broadway, Room 484, Baltimore, MD 21205

Environmental public health tracking offers many opportunities to establish and monitor trends of environmentally related diseases and exposures in order to advance our knowledge about environment and health relationships. Effective environmental public health tracking requires a coordinated approach to identify and utilize summary measures of environmental hazards, exposures, and health outcomes. Such measures are termed environmental public health indicators (EPHI). EPHI can also be used to link environmental exposure and disease data in order to generate hypotheses about the etiology of environmentally related diseases and to identify future research needs. In order to advance the utilization of EPHI for environmental tracking purposes, this paper presents the results of three EPHI projects. These projects were carried out by the Johns Hopkins Center for Excellence in Environmental Public Health Tracking and examine air toxics and leukemia, mercury emissions and fish advisories, and urban sprawl and obesity. These case studies provide a systematic approach for selecting and utilizing indicators of environmental hazards, exposures, and health outcomes to establish temporal and geographic trends. In addition, these projects demonstrate that EPHI linkage projects can be successfully carried out and identify the common obstacles encountered when linking indicators of hazards, exposures, and health outcomes.

Learning Objectives:

Keywords: Environmental Health, Surveillance

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.

[ Recorded presentation ] Recorded presentation

Building Diverse Constituencies and Environmental Public Health Tracking

The 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition (December 10-14, 2005) of APHA