About Tracking

What is the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network?

The National Tracking Network

The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (EPHTN) is a tool that brings together and standardizes a national body of environmental and health data.  It is a project of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which makes available for the first time nationally consistent, standardized data and measures on environmental hazards, exposure, and health outcomes. Funded by Congress, the Tracking Network is CDC’s response to calls for better understanding of how the environment affects people’s health.

Maine Tracking Network

With funding from the federal CDC, the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ME-CDC) developed and implemented the Maine Tracking Network, as well as contributed to the development of the National network. The Maine Tracking Network has three overarching aims:

  • Develop information technology and informatics systems needed to allow for the analysis, visualization, and reporting of environmental public health data and information via a web-based portal.
  • Generate useful information and indicators from environmental public health tracking data for display on both the national and state portals.
  • Build a network of environmental public health partners and stakeholders who will inform, contribute to, and use available data from the Tracking Network for public health action.

Why is the Tracking Network needed?

Until now, no comprehensive systems existed at the state or national level to track many of the exposures and health effects that may be related to environmental hazards. Because current systems are inadequate and/or not linked together, and some hazards and chronic diseases are not tracked at all, it is difficult to study and monitor relationships among hazards, exposures, and health effects.  Chronic diseases account for 7 out of every 10 deaths in the United States, and environmental hazards may influence many of these diseases and health conditions.  Even a small contribution of environmental factors to these diseases would have a large economic cost.

A 2000 Pew Environmental Health Commission report stated that the nation’s existing environmental health system is neither adequate nor well organized to understand the implications of the environment on public health. The report, America’s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network (pdf*), called this lack of critical knowledge, "the environmental health gap."   The Pew Commission recommended the creation of a national network for tracking environmental exposures and disease.

The U.S. Congress responded in 2002 by providing funding to CDC to begin working on the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network.  In 2006, Congress provided funding for the implementation of the National Tracking Network.  With this money, CDC funds health departments in 16 states and 1 city to build local tracking networks that contribute to the national network

What data are on the Network?

As a starting point for development of nationally consistent data, CDC identified the following information to be available on the national and state networks by 2010:

  • Adverse Birth Outcomes (selected types)
  • Air quality measures
  • Asthma hospitalizations and Emergency Department encounters
  • Birth Defects (selected types)
  • Cancer (selected types)
  • Carbon Monoxide poisonings
  • Childhood Lead screenings and elevated blood levels
  • Drinking water (selected contaminants)
  • Heart attack (myocardial infarction) hospitalizations

With time, additional data, information, and tools will be added to the Maine Tracking Network, based on national standards and local user needs. Users of this portal are invited to send comments concerning current or future portal content or functionality to: METracking@maine.gov.

Who are our data partners?

The following groups have provided data to the Maine Tracking Network:

  • Maine Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program
  • Maine Cancer Registry
  • Maine Drinking Water Program
  • Maine Health Data Organization
  • Maine Office of Data, Research, and Vital Statistics
  • Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Air Quality Division
  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Who would we like to thank? (Acknowledgements)

The Maine Tracking Network is partner in the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network.  This network is collection of states and 1 city all with funding from the U.S. CDC to develop their own state tracking networks.  There has been much collaboration among states, illustrating another major accomplishment of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network - the creation of a network of environmental health professionals across federal, state and local health departments who collaborate, share, and learn from one another.

The Maine Tracking Network wishes to specifically acknowledge the State of Washington Tracking Network for permission to emulate some of their “look and feel” of a data portal.  We also wish to acknowledge the State of California Environmental Health Tracking Network for inspiration on an approach to interactive data querying.

The Maine Tracking Network has been developed with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.