Monitoring environmental hazards is critical for the prevention of disease. Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) aims to merge, integrate, analyse, and interpret environmental hazards, exposure, and health data. EPHT can help protect the health of the public by
- providing timely, accurate, and systematic environmental data to public health decision makers on how to reduce the environmental health burden, and
- effectively linking environmental health data and translating it into meaningful information.
Benefit to Public Health
An international EPHT network provides a number of benefits to (public) health professionals, policy makers, local, national, and international stakeholders, and more. Specifically, an international EPHT network serves as
- An established clearinghouse for environmental health data, methods and processes
- A resource with environmental decision support tools for policy and decision makers
- A provider of evidence-based information that can be used to guide public health actions in different settings, such as regional and national health departments
- A resource to increase comparability and cross-border surveillance capacity
- A reference point for public health agencies and scientific organisations
Uses for EPHT Data
- Monitor environmental precursors of disease
- Merge, integrate, analyse and interpret environmental hazards, exposure and health data
- Examine relationships between environmental hazards and diseases
- Identify populations at risk from environmental hazards
- Implement and evaluate intervention and prevention strategies
- Inform public health policy makers
