Mission

To generate and communicate credible scientific information about the relationship between hazardous substances and adverse human health effects to promote responsive public health actions.

The Division's Primary Responsibilities

Health Studies/Activities

Health studies use a scientific approach to collect information to find out if a chemical exposure is making people sick. Most of our health studies have three steps.

• The first is to measure the amount of chemical that people are exposed to.
• The second determines the kinds of health conditions people have, how many people have these conditions, and when they developed them.
• The final step uses statistics to study the relationship between chemical exposure and disease.

After these activities are completed, a report is written and shared with the community. Health activities may include new studies, ongoing studies, medical screenings and analysis of existing datasets.

Registries

A registry is a database that includes information about people with specific exposures or diseases. The data are collected when a person is identified as having been exposed to a specific contaminant or event (e.g., dioxin registry or World Trade Center health registry).

The data are maintained over time and are intended to be used in epidemiological studies to examine long-term health outcomes (exposure registries) or risk factors for illness (disease registries).

Surveillance

Surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data. The final link of the surveillance chain is the application of these data to prevention and control.

A surveillance system includes a functional capacity for data collection, analysis and dissemination linked to public health programs.

Organization