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Approximately 7
out of every 10 deaths in the United States are attributable to chronic
diseases and the national cost of chronic diseases is over $325 billion.
There is growing scientific evidence that environmental factors are strongly
linked to many chronic diseases such as asthma, birth defects, and cancers.
There is a gap
in critical knowledge in understanding the prevalence and incidence of
chronic diseases and potentially associated environmental factors.
Nationwide and statewide health tracking systems, which integrates data
systems and collaborative programs and partnerships involving environmental
and public health professionals and organizations, will help target
resources more efficiently to those areas most in need.
Currently,
California lacks critical knowledge about the possible links between
environmental hazards (which are present in air, water, soil, dust, food, or
other environmental media) and chronic diseases. Without information
obtained by tracking health and links to environmental factors, California
will continue to fight chronic disease with costly treatment, rather than
cost-effective prevention. Statewide and community level incidence data on
chronic diseases are needed to identify trends and patterns and improve
disease prevention efforts.
No
comprehensive systems exist at the state or national level to track many of
the exposures and health effects that may be related to environmental
hazards. Because current systems are inadequate and/or not linked together,
and some hazards and chronic diseases are not tracked at all, it is
difficult to study and monitor relationships among hazards, exposures, and
health effects. The Pew Environmental Health Commission calls this lack of
critical knowledge, "the environmental health gap."
Congress
provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with funding
to begin developing a nationwide environmental health tracking network and
to develop environmental health tracking capacity within state and local
health departments.
To that end, CDC awarded California a three-year grant to support the
development of an EHTN. The resultant collaborative initiative of the
Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control (DEODC) of the
California Department of Public Health (CDPH), the Office of Environmental
Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) of the California Environmental Protection
Agency (Cal/EPA), and the University of California is known as the
California Environmental Health Tracking Program (CEHTP).
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