Welcome to the Maryland Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, your gateway to environmental and health data resources. On this tracking site, you can create data Tables and Maps or view a Gallery of different health topics in Maryland.
What is Environmental Public Health Tracking?
Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) is the collection, integration, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data from environmental hazard monitoring and from human health effects surveillance. Tracking aims to protect communities by providing useful environmental and health data to federal, state, and local agencies. These agencies can, in turn, use this information to plan, implement, and evaluate public health actions to prevent and manage environmentally-related diseases. EPHT allows public health agencies to monitor and disseminate information about environmental factors and disease trends, engage in research on potential linkages between environmental factors and health conditions, and implement and evaluate policies to help prevent or control environmentally-related diseases.
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Environmental public health topics that can be found within our tracking program include:
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Environment Topics
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Resources
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Partners
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Tracking History
In the year 2000, the Pew Environmental Health
Commission detailed an “environmental health gap,” a lack of basic information
needed to document links between environmental hazards and health outcomes. To
close this gap, the Pew report called for integrating tracking systems for
environmental hazards, bodily exposures, and diseases, linking data to allow
for analysis, and using results to prevent disease and save lives.
The Pew Report stimulated new thinking and
specific proposals to overcome the split between environment and health. In
response, Congress provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) with funds in 2002 for pilot projects. CDC invited scientists, managers,
and policy specialists from state health and environmental departments, federal
agencies, medical societies, nongovernmental organizations, and universities to
serve on workgroups to discuss organization, data and information technology,
needs assessment, and public health action.
In 2006, Congress began
funding the implementation of the National Tracking Network. With this money,
CDC funded health departments in 16 states and 1 city to build local tracking
networks. CDC also funded 4 academic partners and continued to work with
several federal collaborators. In 2009, 2010, and 2014, Congress increased
funding for the Tracking Network, and CDC was able to fund an additional 9
states, for a total of 25 states and 1 city health department.
One of the first states to be funded in 2006, the
Maryland Environmental Public Health Tracking Program was established jointly
between the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Maryland
Department of the Environment to serve as a gateway for environmental and
health databases in the state.
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You can also access
information on environmental health issues across the country on the CDC
National Tracking Network:
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