Planning and Capacity Building Activities
| Grantee: | Utah Department of Health |
|---|---|
| Contact: | Wayne Ball, PhD |
| Telephone: | 801-538-6191 |
| E-mail: | wball@utah.gov |
| Address: | Utah Department of Health Environmental Epidemiology Program 288 North, 1460 West P.O. Box 142104 Salt Lake City, UT 84114-2104 |
| Web site: |
http://health.utah.gov/els/epidemiology/ envepi/activities/ephtp.htm [external link] |
| Funded Since: | September 30, 2002 |
| Funded Program: | National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, Part A |
Program Description:
The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) proposes to develop, in collaboration with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) and CDC, plans for, and components of a statewide standards-based, coordinated, and integrated environmental public health tracking network (EPHTN) that allows linkage and reporting of health effects data with human exposure data and environmental hazard data. This EPHTN will be designed to inform consumers, communities, public health practitioners, researchers, and policy makers about chronic diseases and related environmental hazards and population exposures. This will provide UDOH and UDEQ with the capacity to better understand, respond to, and prevent chronic disease in Utah. Information generated by this program will enable UDOH and UDEQ to identify populations at high risk in Utah, examine health concerns at the local level, recognize related environmental factors, and establish prevention strategies statewide.
Utah has a series of assets that will more efficiently be used through an EPHTN. These include:
- Statewide hospital and emergency department discharge databases
- Experience with establishing syndromic surveillance using
electronic transmission of health care encounter records during the
2002 Olympic Winter Games
- A well established statewide Surveillance, Epidemiology and End
Results (SEER) cancer registry
- The Utah Birth Defect Network
- The Resource for Genetic and Epidemiologic Research and Utah
Population Database, which have brought birth- and death-certificate
and cancer registry data together with Utah’s unique genealogic data
to support epidemiologic research
- The University of Utah’s Department of Medical Informatics
- An innovative Web-based system for disseminating public health information within a context that improves understanding of the information.
The EPHTN will aid Utah in developing its capacity to conduct surveillance for health effects by leveraging the benefits of electronically linking the systems mentioned above. Utah also is currently participating in important categorical environmental activities that would benefit from the establishment of an EPHTN. These include:
- The Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance system,
which is funded by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease
Registry and collects and analyzes information about releases of
hazardous substances
- UDEQ, one of 13 state organizations funded under the National
Environmental Information Exchange Grant Program to develop the
National Environmental Information Exchange Network. Utah will build
on and integrate these efforts to produce an advanced tracking system
that can support the goals of the EPHTN.
