Funded Program:
National Environmental Public Health Tracking - Network Implementation; Program Announcement # EH06-601

Program Description:
With the support from EPHT Part A Capacity Building and Environmental Health Effects Tracking grants, the NYC DOHMH has tracked and linked hazard, human exposure and health outcome data on toxic metals, pests and pesticides, and environmental conditions of housing, including carbon monoxide and conditions known to exacerbate asthma. These efforts have already yielded data and findings that have been used to develop interventions and promote legislative and policy initiatives to protect public health, plan for emergencies, reduce exposure to mercury and lead containing cosmetic and medicinal products, pass local laws requiring pesticide use reduction and surveillance and launch international cooperation to prohibit production and importation of unsafe products. The next phase of EPHT activity will enable NYC to significantly enhance surveillance and provide greater access to data on a range of environmental health problems.

NYC will also continue its tracking of pesticides, toxic metals, housing conditions and data describing environmental disease prevalence and outcome. Continued EPHT development will increase their ability to publicly report these data, launch and evaluate interventions to reduce health risks and monitor progress toward improving environmental quality.

NYC built tremendous tracking capacity by creating a data infrastructure, data warehouses, role-based applications, and visualization tools. Over the next five years, NYC will: 1) lead and participate in CDC workgroups; 2) implement a standards-based local and national EPHT network; 3) communicate regularly with local, state and national partners and stakeholders; and 4) conduct a comprehensive evaluation of their local EPHT program, and participate in national evaluation efforts.

At the local level, they will establish a Local EPHT Network that is Part of the National EPHT Network by identifying the existing local Drinking Water Data Sources & Establish Tracking in Core Water Contaminant Data.

The following is a list of the core content areas for establishing the tracking system:

• Core Data on Asthma and Myocardial Infarctions (MI)
• Core Data for Ozone and Particulate Matter and other Air Pollutants
• Core Data on Birth Defects
• Core Data on Cancer
• Core Data on Childhood Blood Lead Levels (BLL)
• Core Data on Birth Outcomes (Vital Statistics)

NYC EPHT has built tracking capabilities for a variety of other datasets that will be used as supplemental sources of data for core and locally determined subjects of tracking. These include:

• The NYC Poison Control Center (PCC)
• Community Health Survey (CHS)
• Pesticide Use
• 2004 NYC Health & Nutrition Examination Survey (NYCHANES)
• NYC’s Syndromic Surveillance System

The next phase of local tracking will enable NYC to substantially improve its data infrastructure, collection and analysis capability, and its delivery of data to stakeholders.

Their goal is to promote local and national EPHT network and program development that: Provides a centralized portal for the delivery and reporting of a broad range of NYC environmental public health data; Enables users to query data, create custom tables, and explore geographic, demographic and temporal associations among data; Promotes the development of data architecture for safe and secure data exchange and efficient interoperability of data; Shares expertise around information technology, analysis, reporting and communication techniques; Builds programmatic, political and funding support to sustain local and national network development by increasing the public’s understanding of the value of surveillance beyond just cluster investigation and promoting etiological research; and Uses data collection, analysis and exchange to promote intra-agency and inter-governmental cooperation around environmental public health assessment, program development and evaluation and policy evaluation and implementation to improve the health of the public.