Environmental Public Health Tracking Position Statement

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials strongly supports efforts to continue to enhance the National Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Network. The EPHT Network involves ongoing collection, integration, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data on environmental hazards, exposure to those hazards, and related health effects.

State and local health departments play a vital role in monitoring environmental hazards and taking appropriate action to protect their residents. Information from the EPHT Network has enabled participating states to effectively plan, apply, and evaluate public health actions to prevent and control environmentally related diseases.

To advance the EPHT Network toward an optimally performing integrated system, ASTHO recommends or supports the following policy actions:

I. Ensure a Structured and Well-Coordinated Approach to EPHT

• EPHT capacity must be built within state health agencies, fostering greater interagency coordination and collaboration among health, epidemiology, toxicology and environmental representatives. EPHT programs must support the data collection efforts in complementary programs so that the data needs for EPHT are sustainable.
• States with tracking programs should continue to support one another and work collectively to further national efforts in linking disparate sources of information through interoperable data exchange systems, addressing important environmental public health concerns and strengthening the overall capacity and performance of the EPHT Network.
• Expanded research on the linkages between exposure and health outcomes, and robust coordination of state, federal and local efforts is necessary to optimize the interpretation and communication of exposures to environmental risks. In addition, states should be engaged in national efforts concerned with educating the public about realistic expectations for biomonitoring and environmental public health tracking.
• The state and national EPHT Network and biomonitoring programs should seek efficiencies through shared technologies and resources, where appropriate.

II. Establish Standards and Procedures to Guarantee Inclusion of All Vital EPHT Components

• The EPHT Network should remain flexible, so that states have the ability to address concerns most relevant to their specific populations in order to drive policy and make well-informed decisions.
• Environmental public health indicators (EPHIs) play an important role in ensuring that information from the EPHT Network can be used to consistently evaluate environmental health status. Due to the evolving changes in environmental health, the current standard set of EPHIs should be regularly evaluated for relevance and the inclusion of new content.
• The EPHT Network should address both natural and built environments.

III. Increased Federal Support and Expansion of the Network to All 50 States and U.S. Territories

• Sustained federal funding is necessary to support the continuous development and maturation of a national EPHT Network. Federal funding must be extended to all state and territorial health agencies to begin or continue development of a truly comprehensive network to track environmental hazards, exposures to those hazards and health effects.
• Biomonitoring should also be a core component of environmental public health tracking. Currently, only three states receive federal funding to develop and increase their capacity to conduct biomonitoring and provide vital information to the EPHT Network. It is essential that all states adopt a standardized approach to biomonitoring and develop the science to bridge biomonitoring and public health tracking.

IV. Secured Sharing of Reliable and Relevant Information with the EPHT Network

• Information from the EPHT Network must continue to be reliable and timely, compliant with Public Health Information Network standards, conceal the identification of any individual or their health status and be presented in aggregate form.
• Expansion and completion of a national EPHT Network should provide information that can be used to reliably track trends in health; timely inform communities, policy-makers, regulators, and others of important environmental health issues; and enable environmental health professionals to identify populations at risk and respond to disease outbreaks, clusters and emerging threats.

Approval History:

ASTHO position statements relate to specific issues that are time sensitive, narrowly defined, or are a further development or interpretation of ASTHO policy. Statements are developed and reviewed by appropriate policy committees and the ASTHO Executive Committee. Position statements are not voted on by the full ASTHO membership.

Environmental Health Committee Review and Approval on May 16, 2011

Board of Directors Review and Approval on July 20, 2011

Policy Expires on July 20, 2014

For further information about this position statement, please contact ASTHO Environmental Health Policy staff at environmentalhealth@astho.org.