Health Tracking
TDH receives grant funding to be part of the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network from CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. TDH's Health Data Website was designed to help our customers quickly locate and visualize health, environmental, and community data. With only a few clicks you will be able to access data trends as a tables, charts and maps. Data is free and open. Data and visualizations are easily downloadable for use in your research, grants, presentations, reports and websites. The TDH Health Data Website should help with:
- Improved public health decision making: Take advantage of high quality, accessible data and decision support tools.
- Healthier Tennesseans in healthier communities: Use data to perform thorough community health needs assessments and to create and implement impactful health improvement plans.
- Increased opportunities for funding: Use data to support grant applications and ensure secured funds are used on programs that provide the most value to Tennesseans.
- Better use of time and resources: Spend less time searching for data and more time using the data for valuable activities.
Health Tracking is the ongoing collection, integration, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of data from environmental monitoring and data from human exposure and health effects surveillance. The goal of EPHT is to protect communities by providing information to plan, apply and evaluate public health actions to prevent and control environmentally-related diseases.
The environment is important in human development and health. Researchers have linked exposures to some environmental hazards with specific diseases. For example, exposure to secondhand smoke has been linked to lung cancer and exposure to lead-based paint has been linked to decreased mental function in children. Other suspected links remain unproven. Tracking environmentally-related exposures and health effects may help to link hazards with illness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network is a system of integrated health, exposure and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state and city sources. On CDC’s EPHT Network, you can view maps, tables and charts with data about:
- chemicals and other substances found in the environment
- some chronic diseases and conditions
- the area where you live
CDC's EPHT Network integrates data about environmental hazards and exposures with data about diseases that are possibly linked to the environment. This system allows federal, state and local agencies and others to:
- monitor and distribute information about environmental hazards and disease trends
- advance research on possible linkages between environmental hazards and disease
- develop, implement and evaluate regulatory and public health actions to prevent or control environment-related diseases.
EPHT has involved substantial collaboration between CDC and public health and environmental partners, including the Tennessee Department of Health.