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Vol. 10 Issue 3, Fall 2005

CDC-Funded Environmental Public Health Tracking Efforts in New York State
The Ribbon 

Carmi Orenstein
M.P.H., Editor

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are supporting states, cities, Centers of Excellence, and multiple collaborations in an effort to achieve the goals mentioned in the previous article: the initiation of a national human biomonitoring program, and the construction of the infrastructure needed to link monitoring programs with disease tracking and chemical hazard programs.

Here in New York State (NYS), the Department of Health (DOH) received a grant to conduct environmental public health tracking projects, as did New York City. These pilot projects begin to pave the way toward a more comprehensive system on both the state and national level.

One project being conducted directly contributes to an improved ability to share data and analyze trends across different agencies, locations, etc. This project, "Pilot Data Exchange Implementation," addresses the need to establish the continuous and automated exchange of data between the NYS DOH and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The project will provide data about environmental hazards, exposures, and health effects throughout NYS, over time. The benefits of this highly technical effort will include the availability of more timely data to support improved collaboration and decision-making.

The NYS DOH is conducting two pilot projects that aim to improve the identification of geographic patterns, clusters and trends with regard to environmental exposures and health outcomes. These projects have a particular emphasis on children's environmental health. The first looks at the geographic distribution and trends of asthma hospitalization and air pollution levels. The second considers patterns of birth outcomes and levels of contaminants in public drinking water supplies.

The New York City project, conducted by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, addresses the issue of urban pesticide use. The new Urban Pesticide Tracking System addresses "the use and misuse of pesticides." The NYS Pesticide Use and Sales Registry, as well as other data sources, identify New York City as having amongst the state's highest pesticide use, as well as a set of unique use and exposure problems.

These NYS projects are amongst the dozens of focused CDC-funded efforts to build a National Environmental Public Health Tracking system. For an overview of the most recent conference sharing information on all projects nationally, that took place in Atlanta this past April, please see: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/tracking/conf05/presentations.htm.


New York State Assemblyman David Koon (135th Assembly District) and Senator Jim Alesi (55th Senate District) and their colleagues will be re-introducing bills (A969-A and S2626-A) next session calling for the development of a more comprehensive environmental health tracking system within the state.

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Last Update 08.29.05