Building Environmental Public Health Tracking Capacity for American Indian Tribes in Minnesota

Since 2009, Minnesota’s Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (MN Tracking) has developed data systems to better understand the relationship between the health of communities and the places where we live, work, and play.  A key objective is to provide data that informs actions and policies for improving health at every level -- national, state, and community.  In 2014, as part of an agency-wide initiative to address public health disparities, MN Tracking explored data on health disparities among American Indians living in Minnesota.  However, data are sparse for understanding the unique relationship between human health and the environment which tribal communities have historically recognized.  In 2014, MN Tracking joined the Bemidji Area Environmental Health Tracking Program pilot project: a partnership between two tribes and one urban Indian community; the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center (GLITEC); the health departments of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In Minnesota, project partners worked with a tribal community to identify environmental and health priorities and to evaluate the strengths and limitations of available data systems.  To coincide with tribal priorities related to healthy homes and assessment, this project included an inventory of available data sources and gaps for drinking water quality, carbon monoxide poisonings, childhood lead poisonings, radon, pesticide poisonings, and related measures of health and population vulnerability at the tribal level.  These data will be used to evaluate and  inform actions and initiatives that protect tribal public health and advance health equity.