Washington State Tracking Network - Washington Tracking Network (WTN) CDC-RFA-EH-22-2202 Project Abstract Summary Background For the past twenty years, the Washington Tracking Network (WTN) has provided greater insight into environmental risk factors and health outcomes for the state of Washington through comprehensive environmental public health surveillance. WTN has actively worked to enhance data utility; improve data access and sharing; increase Tracking Network awareness and use; and to fully implement an environmental public health Tracking Network for Washington and the EPHTN. WTN delivers data and information to local environmental public health (PH) partners, state agency partners, community-based organizations (CBO), the public, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Purpose In collaboration with CDC, other Tracking states, national organizations, and our state partners, WTN will continue to build local public health capacity and expertise in environmental health surveillance. We will continue to work to create a modern, interoperable, and real-time public health data and surveillance system, which includes modernizing the collection, integration, dissemination, and application of timely, local environmental health data. Through these efforts, we will continue to empower public health practitioners, healthcare providers, community members, and others to make information-driven decisions to reduce exposures and health impacts. Outcomes Through implementation of our Work Plan and collaboration with partners, other grantees, and EPHTN, we expect to achieve the following short-term, intermediate, and long-term outcomes: We will improve completeness, timeliness, and quality of environmental public health surveillance data to help to increase data monitoring of environmental health topics and surveillance of environmental health disparities. We will continually improve WTN information technology tools and systems. We will increase collaboration with our partners in data sharing, communication, and response with the goal of reducing health disparities. We will increase dissemination of environmental health information to appropriate audiences using communication best practices. We will increase WTN knowledge and ability and will increase WTN capacity to provide technical assistance to advance environmental public health interventions. We will improve completeness, timeliness, and quality of program performance measurement and evaluation data. Our work toward these strategies will help us to improve our ability and capacity to identify, monitor, and address health disparities. This will support an increased use of these public health data among public health practitioners and environmental professionals to develop and deliver informed programs and to prioritize interventions and policies to address environmental public health issues. All of which will help us prioritize interventions and efforts to communities shown to be experiencing the greatest health disparities to achieve the long-term outcome of reducing environmental health disparities. Methods Washington Tracking Network (WTN) CDC-RFA-EH-22-2202 Consistent with WTN past practices, performance management and quality improvement processes are key to successfully achieving our outcomes. In support of Tracking’s long-term sustainable success, we will continue to work collaboratively with CDC, other grantees, local stakeholders, and public health partners to continue the advancement of Tracking through increased knowledge and action supported by environmental health surveillance that is created by modern, interoperable and real-time public health data which supports data-driven decision-making for improving public health and reducing health disparities.
