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

Abstract #116136

Rebecca Daniels, MSPH¹, Kirstin Crowder, MPH¹, and Sandra Duque, BS². (1) Association of Schools of Public Health, US EPA B105-01, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, 919-541-5734, daniels.rebecca@epamail.epa.gov, (2) US EPA, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20460

The US-Mexico Border 2012 program outlines goals and objectives to improve the environmental and health conditions of the region over a ten-year period. The program mandates that indicators be used to evaluate progress and changes in health outcomes. To achieve this objective, the authors have developed a program-wide strategy to provide a comprehensive approach for the development of environmental health indicators. The strategy uses the Driving forces-Pressures-State-Impacts-Response (DPSIR) model to encapsulate information on the demographic shifts, industrial growth, and environmental and health conditions in the border region, as well as the respective policy responses.

This document is the product of EPA, DHHS and its Mexican counterparts, namely SEMARNAT and SALUD, confronting and resolving several challenges. A primary obstacle was incorporating health indicators in what has been an otherwise environmental program. Another was coming to a consensus on the definition of an indicator while trying to meet the needs of four Federal agencies, several lower levels of government, and the public/private sector. On the technical side, data availability/linkage presents several challenges: differing national systems of disease definition, surveillance and diagnosis; differing systems of environmental monitoring; transborder migration for work and health care; and differing capacities of localities along the border.

Through the Border 2012 program, this strategy is intended to serve as a pragmatic framework for the imminent identification, development, and processing of much-needed information on a rapidly changing and underserved region shared by two countries. The approaches to reach consensus on several difficult issues provides a model for similar endeavors.

Learning Objectives:

1.Analyze environmental public health indicators in the context of a holistic paradigm;
• Recognize the challenges of implementing environmental public indicators in a binational setting

Keywords: Indicators, International Systems

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