CDC's environmental public health tracking network: an innovative dynamic surveillance system for you.

T he Centers for Disease Con­ trol and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Environmental Public Health Tracking Network CDC’s Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (Tracking Program) began with the idea that health and environmental problems are not always separate issues with unrelated solutions. When the Tracking Program was funded in 2002, no systems existed at the state or national level to track many of the expo­ sures and health effects that may be related to environmental hazards. In addition, in most cases, existing environmental hazard, expo­ sure, and disease-tracking systems were not linked. Because existing systems were not linked, studying and monitoring relationships among hazards, exposures, and health effects was difficult. The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (Tracking Network) is CDC’s solution to these issues. CDC’s Tracking Network is a surveillance system that integrates data about environ­ mental hazards and exposures with data about diseases and conditions that are pos­ sibly linked to those hazards and exposures. This system allows federal, state, and local agencies and other organizations to • monitor and distribute information about environmental hazards and disease trends; • advance research on possible links between environmental hazards and disease; and • develop, implement, and evaluate regula­ tory and public health actions to prevent or control environment-related diseases. The data in this surveillance system come from a variety of national, state, and city sources. CDC funds health departments in 23 states as well as New York City to build and maintain local tracking networks and contribute data to the national system (Fig­ ure 1). CDC also works with other federal and professional organizational partners to obtain data from national data sources. These data are accessible in maps, tables, and charts. The Tracking Network’s mapping and data-searching features are interactive and highly customizable; data can be organized and viewed in many different ways; and most of the data can be viewed at county as well as state level. The most recent functionality improvements lets users build dynamic, ani­ mated maps to easily see trends over time for any content area on the Tracking Network.