Environmental Epidemiology Subcommittee 

The Environmental Epidemiology Subcommittee is committed to enhancing environmental surveillance capacity nationally and among state health departments. Members meet to discuss key issues, projects and activities related to the goal of the Subcommittee. The Subcommittee supports the sharing of ideas and time amongst a network of environmental epidemiologists allowing state practitioners a resource base and network of colleagues and experts not found in all state health departments.

Current Activities-

• Members are working with National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) staff to review newly updated CSTE Position Statements for conditions currently identified as being nationally notifiable by CSTE: namely, pesticides and lead. Collaboration will continue to also identify other environmentally related conditions, which would be recommended to be placed under national surveillance through the CSTE Position Statement process. 
   
• The Climate Change Workgroup has developed a “suite” of (1) Environmental; (2) Population vulnerability; (3) Morbidity and mortality; and (4) Policy (i.e. implementation of adaptation and mitigation programs and activities) indicators. Currently, there are 12 indicators that have been developed, pilot-tested, and compiled for final review by the Workgroup. Click here to see the climate change indicators.

Environmental Public Health Indicators

Environmental Public Health Indicators (EPHI) are descriptive summary measures derived from existing environmental health programs that can be used to enhance environmental health practice by improving the accessibility, availability, and distribution of information for decision-making. EPHIs were first described by the CDC/CSTE environmental public health indicators project in 2000 (www.cdc.gov/nceh/indicators/). CSTE and CDC collaborated to address the gap in understanding of environmentally related diseases and identified specific areas and indicators that should be evaluated. These indicators, along with other public health indicators developed by CSTE, were identified in part to provide a means of placing non-infectious diseases and conditions under surveillance towards building a comprehensive National Public Health Surveillance System (NPHSS) (CSTE 1994).

Click here to read the EPHI report

Since 2000, the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program has begun to enhance environmental health surveillance capacity nationally and among state health departments by encouraging the linkage of environmental and health data using standardized, systematic methods. These efforts included the development measures that provide consistent and standardized methods for comparing public health surveillance and environmental monitoring data across multiple states.

Click here for more information on environmental indicators

Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Position Statement, Setting priorities for diseases, conditions and health status indicators or outcomes in the National Public Health Surveillance System. (1993-4)

State Environmental Public Health Indicators Collaborative

The State Environmental Public Health Indicators Collaborative (SEHIC) works to enhance environmental health surveillance by identifying priority environmental health concerns and the appropriate data resources and methods for indicator development. This work is geared at universal applicability, that is, each and every state should be able to replicate and produce environmental public health indicators. 

SEHIC has established a process, produced a framework, and created a vision for developing environmental public health indicators for use at the state level. This includes standard language, definitions and consistent description templates for defining the elements and attributes of indicators. The description templates are accompanied by how-to guides to show exactly how to calculate the measures being generated to describe the indicators. 

SEHIC played a formative role in the development of indicators now being prepared for the national environmental public health tracking network.  The future role of SEHIC will be in development and innovation of emerging environmental indicators. Currently, SEHIC members are working to finalize current indicator efforts, post materials on the CSTE website, and pilot test indicator data in states.

Current Activities-

• The Asthma Workgroup has developed and pilot tested indicators on asthma hospitalizations, chronic lower respiratory disease mortality, and emergency department visits. 

• The Air Quality Workgroup has developed indicators on ambient concentrations of pollutants, exceedances of air quality indices and standards, hazardous air pollutants, traffic, and greenhouse gas emissions.  

• The Drinking Water Workgroup has developed indicators on arsenic and total trihalomethanes in drinking water. Further indicator development will provide surveillance of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disruptors in water.  

• The Climate Change Workgroup has developed a set of environmental, population vulnerability, morbidity and mortality, and policy indicators. Templates and how-to guides are being finalized.

Disaster Epi Workshop

A common understanding of and approach to the range of epidemiologic responses to large scale emergencies and disasters in our communities is essential to effective disaster response.  To this end, CSTE and CDC have collaborated to bring together epidemiologists from across the subject disciplines in state, federal, and local public health agencies and key partner organizations in the Disaster Epidemiology Workshop. This two-day workshop will include breakout sessions concerning rapid needs assessments (e.g. Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response – CASPER), surveillance, and epidemiologic studies.  The initial focus will be on natural disasters and large-scale unintentional releases (such as those resulting from a train derailment, plant malfunction, etc.). 

Click here to learn more.

Disaster Epidemiology White Paper Forum

Disaster Epi Training
Epidemiologists have technical skills that are needed in all phases of the disaster cycle and can be utilized to produce actionable information during an emergency. CSTE is collaborating with CDC and other partners to provide novel training in disaster epidemiology for epidemiologists. Each training will bring together three existing federal tools for epidemiologists in disaster situations: Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER), Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance (ERHMS), and Assessment of Chemical Exposures (ACE), into one convenient location. The inaugural training will convene in Los Angeles, CA on April 25-26, 2012.

Training flyer