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

Abstract #116410

Wilma Subra, MS, Subra Company, Inc., 3814 Old Jeanerette Road, New Iberia, LA 70563, (337) 367-2216, Subracom@aol.com

Grass Roots and Environmental Justice Communities frequently experience negative health impacts which they associate with environmental pollution. In order to evaluate the potential sources of air, water, soil, etc. pollution, examination of government and industry generated data is often performed. The data, thought often difficult to obtain, gives one perspective of what may be happening in the community. Once the data is obtained, a major part of the evaluation of the data is centered around the integrity of the data. Data evaluation must determine if the data are accurate, if the data represent the actual situation, if there are data gaps, if the different sources of data present similar or different perspectives, and whether the monitoring looked for the appropriate factors or only examine what was known not to be present.

Evaluation of various sources of data will be presented in order to assist community members in evaluating the integrity of publicly available data. Community members being impacted by environmental pollution are in need of methods to evaluate the integrity of data in order to make informed and accurate decisions and develop strategies to address their situations.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand methods of assisting Grass Roots and Environmental Justice communities in identifying and defining sources of pollution based on available data, and developing strategies to deal with environmental pollution associated with health impacts.
• Learn to identify sources of data and determine the integrity of the data to be utilized to define community health impacts.

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.