Despite gains in longevity across the US population, a large burden of preventable disease has developed and persists.The prevalence of chronic disease in US adults and children has risen from 1.8% in the 1960s to over 7% today. Over the past few decades, childhood cancer incidence, asthma prevalence, and other disorders have been on the rise.
The Environmental Health Tracking Programs of California, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, among others, have published state reports on the health and economic burden of selected health conditions among children (e.g. asthma, lead exposure). Using methods developed by Drs. Leo Trasande and Phil Landrigan, these state reports estimate the enormous costs associated with these conditions, costs that could be avoided by reducing preventable environmental hazards.
In California alone, such reductions could save $10-13 billion over the lifetime of all children born within in a single year.
On this call representatives from several states discussed the findings of the reports in their specific regions.
Featured Speakers
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Gala King is the Health Surveillance Director of the California Environmental Health Tracking Program. Gala has been with the California Tracking Program for almost 10 years, focusing on data access, dissemination, and stakeholder engagement. |
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Chiahui Chawla began working at the NH EPHT Program in early 2012, providing statistical support to environmental health data analysis. Her recently work has focused on the NH Health WISDOM (Web-based Interactive System for Direction and Outcome Measures) project to develop interactive reports for the NH EPHT web data portal and the NH Division of Public Health Services. |
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Blair Sevcik is an epidemiologist with the MN Tracking Program at the Minnesota Department of Health, where she works on the collection and statistical analysis of public health surveillance data including childhood lead poisoning and other topics for their data portal, Minnesota Public Health Data Access. |
The call was moderated by Sharyle Patton, Director of CHE Special Projects and Commonweal's Biomonitoring Resource Center. The call lasted for one hour and was recorded for archival purposes.