Using the National Environmental Public Health Performance Standards to improve environmental public health infrastructure in Maryland

The Family Health Administration in the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene piloted the use of the National Environmental Public Health Performance Standards in 2008 with selected environmental public health programs at the State level. Findings from the analysis indicated performance gaps in monitoring environmental and health status to identify and solve community environmental health problems, and in evaluating the effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population based environmental health services. Initiatives for improvement have included enhancement of data sharing, systems, and analysis; and development of a community environmental health profile methodology. Specifically, this included the implementation of a community health scorecard by county that included environmental health indicators, the release of a web-based query system and training of local health departments in its use and application to environmental health, implementation of a project to analyze and disseminate relevant hospital data to measure ambulatory-care sensitive conditions, and establishment of data agreements with Medicaid for environmental public health surveillance purposes. This session will identify the benefits from use of the analysis instrument, challenges in applying the tool at the State level, and the challenges and successes of the projects undertaken to better monitor and evaluate environmental health services. The session will discuss recommendations on establishing inter- and intra-agency data sharing agreements; lessons learned from implementing a custom, web-based query system that includes birth, death, hospitalization, and risk factor data; and recommendations on implementing a new, statewide data initiative using hospital data to make existing data useful in different ways.