Thursday, April 25, 2024
4/25/2024
Arizona (AZ) recognizes the need for providing researchers, public health professionals, and the public with summary information on health outcomes influenced by environmental hazards. The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (EPHT) hopes to expand capacity and usage of the existing public portal “AZ EPHT Data Explorer” (www.azdhs.gov/epht). AZ will collaborate with the ADHS Office of Health Equity to add needed data for county and state health improvement plans by improving access and granularity of data on environmental health disparities for policy development on the Data Explorer. AZ EPHT will enhance the use and capabilities of informatics, including data-sharing, data exchange, and application to practice and use these strategies in decision-making improvement processes to address environmental health hazards, such as foodborne illness, childhood lead poisoning, arsenic, air toxic hazards, and extreme heat. ADHS was a previous grantee from 2017-2022 under cooperative agreement CDC-RFA-EH17-1702. The portal is a tool to help Arizonans learn about environmental hazards in the state that could impact their health. EPHT has gathered more than 592 measures in 31 content areas and 3.5 million rows of data from multiple sources for Arizonans to view both environmental and health outcome data in one easily accessible place. Data on heat-related illness, asthma, acute myocardial infarction, carbon monoxide poisoning, coronary pulmonary obstructive disease hospitalizations and emergency department visits; air quality and drinking water quality; birth defects and natality; childhood blood lead poisoning; cancer incidence; extreme heat, flood, and drought vulnerability; and population demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, and social vulnerability can be viewed as maps, graphs, rates, and tables. Data are displayed when feasible at both county and sub-county scales, such as for hospitalizations and public water system contaminants. Data and corresponding metadata can also be downloaded. Additional layers such as schools, hospitals, air quality nonattainment areas, and American Indian Reservations can also be overlaid. EPHT hopes to maintain and expand required NCDM (Nationally Consistent Data Measures), add optional NCDM, and other indicators to help address reducing environmental exposures and health disparities in Arizona. The Program will also like to advance analysis and increase use of the data for public health action by communication strategies, data visualizations, teaching, and partnering for advanced analyses on the data. The Program hopes to modernize infrastructure to accommodate data pipelines for near-real time data from multiple surveillance systems. The Program will work with local partners for small area analyses that could aid informing public health actions and improve efforts around health equity. In order to accomplish these goals, the ADHS EPHT Program is applying for Components A and B.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
