Mission

Without question environmental contaminants are affecting people’s health.  Environmental hazards are among parents’ top health concerns for their children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.  Americans are concerned about hazards and health impacts related to environmental exposures.  Citizens and policy makers want access to current, relevant, and accurate information about environmental exposures and health outcomes to facilitate individual, community, state, and national decision-making about adopting strategies to reduce the burden of disease attributable to the environment.

Researchers have linked specific diseases with exposures to some environmental hazards, such as asbestos and lung cancer.  However, other links remain unproven, such as the suspected link between exposure to disinfection by-products and bladder cancer.  Previously no system existed at the state or national level to track many of the exposures and health effects that may be related to environmental hazards. 

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (Tracking Network) is one way to fill these gaps.  The mission of tracking is to provide information that can be used to plan, apply, and evaluate actions to prevent and control environmentally related diseases.  Understanding how these and other environmental factors are linked to chronic disease is essential to disease prevention- and to protecting the health of our communities.

                                                “We can track the flu, West Nile Virus, and mad cow disease, but not enough of the chronic illnesses that are the biggest killers of Americans, because we just don’t have enough of that basic information.”
-Thomas Burke, Ph.D.,
Professor, John Hopkins University

Goals

The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network has five goals:
1. Build sustainable National and State Tracking Networks.
2. Build Tracking workforce and infrastructure.
3. Provide data to help health policy, practices, and other actions.
4. Advance environmental public health science and research.
5. Help collaboration among health and environmental groups.

“We need to get Tracking results in front of people in a very usable way, not only on a national level, but by state and locality as well.”
-Howard Frumkin, M.D., Dr.P.H.,
Director, National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, CDC

Background

In 2000, the Pew Environmental Health Commission detailed an “environmental health gap,” a lack of basic information needed to document links between environmental hazards and chronic disease.  “When the Pew Commission report came out, everyone- the press, the public, congress- couldn’t believe that a Tracking Program didn’t already exists,” says Shelly Hearne, Founding Executive Director for Trust for America’s Health.  “While overt poisoning from environmental toxins has long been recognized, the environmental links to a broad array of chronic diseases of uncertain cause are unknown,” concluded the report.  To close this gap, the Pew report called for integrating tracking systems for environmental hazards, bodily exposures, and diseases; linking data to allow swift analysis; and using the results to prevent disease and save lives.’

The Pew report stimulated new thinking and specific proposals to overcome the split between environment and health. In response, Congress provided CDC with funds in 2002 to develop the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program. CDC in turn asked scientists, managers, and policy specialists from two dozen state health and environmental departments, medical societies, nongovernmental organizations, universities, and federal agencies to serve on workgroups addressing Tracking issues. The four workgroups covered organization issues, information technology and tracking methods, tracking systems needs assessment, and how to provide tracking data to health agencies, elected officials, and the public to prevent disease. CDC then selected pilot programs around the country to build tracking capacity and demonstrate just what a tracking program could do. The knowledge gained would open new avenues of discovery, new paths of prevention, and new hope for long-term health for all Americans.

Currently, there are 23 state and local health departments that are part of the National Tracking Network.

“When the Pew Commission report came out, everyone- the press, the public, congress- couldn’t believe that a Tracking Program didn’t already exist.”
-Shelly Hearne, Dr.P.H.,
Found Executive Director, Trust for America’s Health