| Integrating Research, Surveillance, and Practice in Environmental Public Health Tracking Amy D. Kyle,1 John R. Balmes,1,2 Patricia A. Buffler,1 and Philip R. Lee3 1School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA; 2School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA; 3Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA Abstract
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working with selected state and local health departments, academic centers, and others to develop an environmental public health tracking initiative to improve geographic and temporal surveillance of environmental hazards, exposures, and related health outcomes. The objective is to support policy strategies and interventions for disease prevention by communities and environmental health agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. The first 3 years of the initiative focused on supporting states and cities in developing capacity, information technology infrastructure, and pilot projects to demonstrate electronic linkage of environmental hazard or exposure data and disease data. The next phase requires implementation across states. This transition could provide opportunities to further integrate research, surveillance, and practice through attention to four areas. The first is to develop a shared and transparent knowledge base that draws on environmental health research and substantiates decisions about what to track and the interpretation of results. The second is to identify and address information needs of policy and stakeholder audiences in environmental health. The third is to adopt mechanisms for coordination, decision making, and governance that can incorporate and support the major entities involved. The fourth is to promote disease prevention by systematically identifying and addressing population-level environmental determinants of health and disease. Key words: chronic disease, disease surveillance, environmental exposure, environmental health, environmental health indicators, environmental health policy, environmental monitoring, environmental public health tracking, population health, public health surveillance. Environ Health Perspect 114:980–984 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8735 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 27 February 2006]
Address correspondence to A.D. Kyle, School of Public Health, 140 Warren Hall MC 7360, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA. Telephone: (510) 642-8847. Fax: (415) 869-2866. E-mail: adkyle@berkeley.edu G. Lomax, former research director of the California Environmental Health Tracking Program, provided important comments on drafts of this manuscript. Work on the manuscript was supported in part by Cooperative Agreement U50/CCU922409 between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Regents of the University of California. The views expressed are those solely of the authors and do not represent the views of the funding agency. The authors appreciate the suggestions of the anonymous reviewers. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 12 October 2005 ; accepted 27 February 2006.
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