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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Lance Gable, JD, MPH, Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer, Detroit, MI 48202, (313) 577-9774, lancegable@wayne.edu

The concept of Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) is rooted in efforts to assess the effects of exposures to environmental hazards on public health outcomes. While substantial evidence of this linkage exists, public health surveillance data, environmental hazard data, and exposure monitoring data have not been utilized in an integrated effort to track the associations between environmental factors and health outcomes, or to carefully develop prevention and intervention strategies to reduce the health risks of environmental exposures.

A successful EPHT program demands a robust information infrastructure to track relevant environmental factors and analyze their impact on population health. State statutes and regulations are key to the development of this information infrastructure. State laws may authorize or limit the ability of state agencies to acquire, use, retain, or disclose data on environmental hazards, environmental exposures, and health human effects.

This presentation will address laws that facilitate the acquisition of data (surveillance, reporting, access to existing databases) and laws that allow or restrict the use of data (sharing of data between agencies, comparing databases, disclosure to entities outside state government, privacy and confidentiality of data). In order to fully implement EPHT, government agencies may need additional legal authority to acquire needed information and to use and share this information. Simultaneously, they will have to respect privacy and proprietary concerns related to these data. However, efforts to maintain good data stewardship should not be a barrier to EPHT. Laws should facilitate EPHT in a way that promotes health and human rights.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the major legal issues that may affect the ability of states to engage in environmental public health tracking (EPHT).
• Identify the legal and policy challenges posed by environmental public health tracking.
• Highlight the efforts of the Montana Environmental Public Health Tracking Initiative to develop legal provisions to facilitate EPHT.
• Discuss human rights concerns related to the practice of EPHT.

Keywords: Environmental Health, Health Law

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation