California Environmental Health Tracking Network Program

The California Breast Cancer Mapping Project analyzed breast cancer rates by census tract, as opposed to traditional county-level surveillance, and pinpointed four previously unidentified areas of California with rates substantially higher than the state average.

The California Environmental Health Tracking Network implementation project emphasizes the development of spatial analysis and visualization methods that enable state-of-the-art systems for predicting geographically related exposures to environmental hazards and relating those exposures to health indicators. This advances the fundamental goals of the Environmental Public Health Tracking program.

The Environmental Health Tracking program will provide the California EPA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment with statewide data related to asthma and heart attack emergency department visits by census track or zip code.

The goal of this proposal is to develop a dynamic, web-based climate change and remote sending visualization system to support ongoing tracking activities of the California Environmental Health Tracking Program. A user needs and design assessment is being conducted to ensure the end users have improved access and usability of data.

This project focuses on developing a set of geospatial layers for Fresno and Los Angeles counties that can establish the likelihood of community-level heat islands and heat vulnerability. This can be used as a screening tool to guide policy makers and communities in efforts to address climate change impacts.

In collaboration with McKing Consulting Service, this subcontract provides the Centerse for Disease Control and Prevention with data and analyses on the accuracy of data collected about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis from the metropolitan area surveillance systems.

The goals of this project are to: 1) maintain, enhance and expand the California Environmental Health Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Network; 2) maintain and enhance standards-compliant network information technology infrastructure; 3) increase the utility of tracking data and information; and 4) increase stakeholder capacity to access, understand and utilize EPHT data and information to carry out public health functions.

The California Environmental Health Tracking Program (CEHTP) will contribute to the exposure assessment research. Among other activities, CEHTP will obtain the geocodes (latitude, longitude) of approximately 6,000 birth defect cases and controls' maternal addresses (blinded to case/control status) and will link the geocodes to 1997-2008 agricultural pesticide use in California using the CEHTP pesticide linkage system

The goal of this project is to develop an analytic framework to advance knowledge of the relationship between ambient heat and morbidity and mortality as well as the underlying determinants of risk. This information can be translated into public health policy guidelines that reflect current (and future projected) climatological conditions.