Surveillance in environmental public health: issues, systems, and sources.

Abstract

This article describes environmental public health surveillance and proposes a framework to enhance its practice in the United States. Special issues for surveillance in environmental public health are examined, and examples of existing systems useful for environmental public health practice are provided. Current and projected surveillance needs, as well as potential sources of data, are examined. The proposed framework for conducting environmental public health surveillance involves data from three points in the process by which an agent in the environment produces an adverse outcome in a host: hazards, exposures, and outcomes. Environmental health practitioners should build on efforts in other fields (e.g., infectious diseases and occupational health) to establish priorities in the surveillance of health conditions associated with exposure to environmental toxicants. For specific surveillance programs, existing data systems, as well as data gaps, should be identified. Coordinated surveillance systems can facilitate public health efforts to prevent and control disease, injury, and disability related to the interaction between people and their environment.

National Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Surveillance Framework and Recent Estimates

“…17 However, as is often the case with environmental public health surveillance, 17 the CO poisoning surveillance framework includes data from multiple secondary sources. Although use of secondary data sources for surveillance might be less expensive and require fewer resources than establishing a largescale active surveillance system, it has some limitations that might restrict the usability of the data.…”

“…[1][2][3]31,32 As a whole, timely annual surveillance data are important in resource allocation and program planning. 17 Acquisition of secondary data can be time consuming and resource intensive, and surveillance systems relying on secondary data sources are restricted by the timing of data release by the specific data authority, resource availability, and methodological implications (e.g., five years of NVSS data are usually compiled together for statistically valid estimates of CO-related mortality).…”

Avanços e desafios à Política de Vigilância à Saúde Bucal no Brasil

“…1,16,21,28 For the purposes of narrative simplicity and clarity in this review, this "multi-faceted" conceptual construct will be understood as "the systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data on specifi c health problems which affect the population, essential to the planning, implementation and evaluation of public health care practice, being integrated with the rapid dissemination of information to all of those responsible for prevention and control of aforesaid health problems". 1,17,34,35 Health surveillance is an effort to integrate actions by the health care sector concerning various dimensions of the health-disease process, especially from the point of view of social determination. With a more totalizing vision, it seeks to develop new proposals for the deployment of health systems, with the premise of an immersion in the territorial context of the actions.…”

Advances and Current Themes in Occupational Health and Environmental Public Health Surveillance

“…As investigators learned from the recent initiatives within occupational health surveillance (2,124), the theory of modern environmental public health surveillance arose in the 1990s. A number of influential papers and reports noted that environmental health surveillance was fragmented in the United States and creating a comprehensive national environmental public health surveillance system could be highly beneficial.…”