Funded Program:
National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, Part A
Pennsylvania Department of Health (PADOH) will partner with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) to implement this program. This grant allows PADEP and PADOH to collaborate on environmental problems that emerge throughout the state and develop a coordinated and integrated environmental public health tracking (surveillance) network (EPHTN) that will include both environmental databases developed and maintained by PADEP as well as environmental health outcome databases developed and maintained by PADOH.

PADOH recognizes that multiple, coordinated elements are necessary for an effective EPHTN. These include the following initiatives to:

• Collaborate and forge partnerships between traditional health-focused entities (for-profit and non-profit) and environmental monitoring agencies at the federal, state, and local levels
• Expand capacity in the area of personnel expertise and latest technology infrastructure
• Develop standardized electronic data elements
• Build mechanisms for disseminating information to stakeholders.

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) proposes to develop, in collaboration with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) and CDC, plans for, and components of a statewide standards-based, coordinated, and integrated environmental public health tracking network (EPHTN) that allows linkage and reporting of health effects data with human exposure data and environmental hazard data. This EPHTN will be designed to inform consumers, communities, public health practitioners, researchers, and policy makers about chronic diseases and related environmental hazards and population exposures. This will provide UDOH and UDEQ with the capacity to better understand, respond to, and prevent chronic disease in Utah. Information generated by this program will enable UDOH and UDEQ to identify populations at high risk in Utah, examine health concerns at the local level, recognize related environmental factors, and establish prevention strategies statewide.

Utah has a series of assets that will more efficiently be used through an EPHTN. These include:

• Statewide hospital and emergency department discharge databases
• Experience with establishing syndromic surveillance using electronic transmission of health care encounter records during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games
• A well established statewide Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) cancer registry
• The Utah Birth Defect Network
• The Resource for Genetic and Epidemiologic Research and Utah Population Database, which have brought birth- and death-certificate and cancer registry data together with Utah’s unique genealogic data to support epidemiologic research
• The University of Utah’s Department of Medical Informatics
• An innovative Web-based system for disseminating public health information within a context that improves understanding of the information.

• The EPHTN will aid Utah in developing its capacity to conduct surveillance for health effects by leveraging the benefits of electronically linking the systems mentioned above. Utah also is currently participating in important categorical environmental activities that would benefit from the establishment of an EPHTN. These include:
• The Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance system, which is funded by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and collects and analyzes information about releases of hazardous substances
• UDEQ, one of 13 state organizations funded under the National Environmental Information Exchange Grant Program to develop the National Environmental Information Exchange Network. Utah will build on and integrate these efforts to produce an advanced tracking system that can support the goals of the EPHTN.