In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to fund state health departments andThree academic centers to begin to develop a national Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT)network. For the past 3 years, the Berkeley Center for Environmental Public Health Tracking has beenengaged in multiple activities designed to assist the CDC and partner health departments in the building thenetwork. In this application for renewed funding, we propose to continue our work with the overall goal ofsupporting increased capacity for EPHT by developing methods and analyses that can contribute to betterability of both technical and non-technical audiences to understand relationships among environmentalfactors (hazards), exposures, and health outcomes and to act on this knowledge to protect health at thenational, regional, and community levels.
The specific aims we propose to achieve this goal are groupedunder three broad themes: 1) asthma surveillance and the environment; 2) assessment and characterizationof environmental factors (hazards) and exposures; and 3) environmental justice and health disparities.
Under specific aim 1, we will develop capacity to obtain ongoing local-level asthma prevalence and severity datawith a school-based, survey approach in Fresno; compare prevalence estimates from the school surveyinstrument with prevalence estimates from school nurse-based surveillance programs in CT and MA; andcollaborate with the CA EPHT program to determine whether any indicators used in that program's managedcare-based surveillance pilot project can estimate asthma prevalence and/or severity in Oakland and tostudy the relationship of exposure to pesticides and asthma outcomes in Fresno.
Under specific aim 2, wewill merge biomonitoring data with geographically-based emissions and environmental sample data toincrease the relevance of hazard indicators; improve methods for combining the geographic distributions ofenvironmental factors with information on human population distributions and activities; develop sets ofmeasures that represent and interpret currently available data about hazards and exposures; conduct a casestudy of surveillance of lead exposures to identify factors that contribute to improved data quality; and use acase study focused on asthma in children to develop communication tools to disseminate to state health andenvironmental agencies tracking information that will support actions to address pertinent environmentalfactors.
Under specific aim 3, we will develop methods to address environmental justice and healthdisparities in EPHT in general and for schools in particular. In addition to these specific aims, we willestablish an internship program for students that will train them in EPHT and a consultative group amongEPHT program partners and other critical stakeholders to build capacity through on-going communication ofrelevant knowledge, project accomplishments, barriers, and lessons learned.
