Environmental Public Health Tracking: Location-Based Community Profiles

Background: The Environmental Public Health Tracking (Tracking) state and national portals provide important data on environmental health measures, but often focus on topic specific reports instead of place-based snapshots. Many of these measures are available at the county rather than the sub-county (community) level. In 2013, a national workgroup was formed by Tracking states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop environmental health profiles at the sub-county level in order to inform communities about environmental hazards and health outcomes at the local level.

Methods: The workgroup collected feedback from state and local health officials, community-based organizations, hospitals, and other stakeholders to inform the development of community snapshot reports. The stakeholder assessment identified priorities for sub-county data sets. Participating states then used tools like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to produce such data sets at the zip code or census tract level.  For example, Florida used GIS to calculate proximity measures such as the percentage of a zip code’s population that lives within ½ mile (walking distance) of a fast food restaurant.

Results: Eight Tracking grantees will release community environmental health profile reports in 2014. The profile format and content recommendations from the workgroup were intentionally kept flexible, and were permitted to vary depending on state/city health department capacity. For example, some profile reports will be available at the sub-county level (i.e., zip code, census tract), while other reports are limited to the county level.

 

Conclusions: The goal of this project was to combine environmental and related health measures into community-specific snapshots, building off existing Tracking infrastructure. This workgroup aimed to meet an identified need for sub-county environmental health measures. The resulting community profile reports will be used by local health departments and health councils, local governments, and other stakeholders statewide to assess environmental health factors in their communities.