At a glance
CDC supports Utah and other state and local health departments, or their bona fide agents, through cooperative agreements to support childhood lead poisoning prevention activities. Read about the program's successes.
About the program
The State of Utah received $441,633 through cooperative agreement EH21-2102 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the third funding year. The funds address childhood lead poisoning prevention and surveillance programmatic activities being conducted from September 30, 2023, to September 29, 2024.
The strategies focus on:
- Ensuring blood lead testing and reporting
- Enhancing blood lead surveillance
- Improving linkages to recommended services
To learn more about these efforts in Utah, contact the program below.
Cannon Health Building
288 North 1460 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84116
Phone: 888-222-2542
Success stories refer to activities conducted between 2014 and 2019. Utah did not receive funding at this time and was not required to submit a success story.
Success story: funding year 2
Utah improves childhood lead reporting by updating their electronic lead exposure questionnaire
Challenge
The Utah Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (UCLPPP) uses EpiTrax as the online system for reporting and monitoring blood lead cases across the state. EpiTrax is a surveillance and outbreak management system, modeled after the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, that allows state and federal public health agencies to identify and investigate communicable diseases, environmental hazards, and bioterrorism threats. The system contains a section for local health departments to complete a questionnaire to assess what exposures may have led to a higher blood lead level in children younger than 6 years of age. Unfortunately, the questionnaire was outdated and there was no centralized location for maintaining the questionnaire data.
Intervention
UCLPPP created an updated childhood lead risk questionnaire that contains two major sections: "Childhood Lead Risk Survey" and "Home & Environment Assessment." These sections contain more in-depth questions regarding possible lead exposures in the home which will allow for improved case management. UCLPPP collaborated with the Utah Division of Disease Control and Prevention Informatics Program to format and publish the new survey in EpiTrax in April 2022, and local health departments were notified of the update.
Impact
Local health departments have begun to use the new questionnaire with a 47% post-intervention completion rate. The newly collected information will allow the UCLPPP to track lead exposures throughout the state and inform local health departments of any trends.
Funding for this work was made possible in part by EH21-2102 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The views expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the CDC; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.