Mission and Goals
Mission
Without question, environmental contaminants affect 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
Professor, John Hopkins University
Goals
- Build sustainable National and State Tracking Networks
- Build Tracking workforce and infrastructure
- Provide data to help health policy, practices, and other actions
- Advance environmental public health science and research
- 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
Director, National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, CDC
