Clinton, Hatch, Reid Introduce Health Tracking Legislation

[The Straight Story]

Clinton, Hatch, Reid Introduce Health Tracking Legislation

Bill would Advance Understanding of Links Between Pollution and Chronic Disease

Washington, DC - Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate Majority Leader, today announced they have legislation to establish a national public-health tracking network that enables researchers to better identify connections between adverse health effects and pollution, and would increase funding for locally based pilot projects to address environmental health concerns. The Coordinated Environmental Public Health Network Act of 2007 would also increase funding for the biomonitoring work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which tracks exposure to more than 100 chemicals through blood sampling.

“The health tracking programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resulted in real gains to health in New York. Funding from the tracking program contributed to pesticide regulation reform in New York City, and helped to develop an emergency carbon monoxide surveillance program in Buffalo,” said Senator Clinton. “This legislation will help to expand and improve the work of public health practitioners across the nation, and result in increased understanding of the environmental links to chronic diseases, such as cancer.”

“This legislation will help to bridge the country’s environmental health gap, enabling us to better understand and respond to emerging and recurring public health threats,” Hatch said. “There is considerable information out there that may reveal links of environmental exposures to health effects. Only through coordination of this information at local, state, and federal levels will scientists be able to make important discoveries that will bolster America’s public health defense.”

Over the past six years, Congress has allocated nearly $150 million for pilot programs to begin developing a Coordinated Environmental Public Health Network. The CDC has used these funds to implement three sets of pilot grants focused on building state and local capacity to track environmental exposures and adverse health outcomes. These projects have included efforts to identify environmental health problems and to link, through standardization of electronic data elements, disparate sets of existing health data with data on environmental hazards. Funds have also gone toward research on the impact of environmental exposures on human health, as well as dissemination of best practices to additional jurisdictions interested in environmental health tracking. These pilot projects are giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency the information they need to put in place the comprehensive, coordinated network created by this legislation.

Once fully operational, the Network will coordinate national, state and local efforts to inform communities, public health officials, researchers and policymakers of potential environmental health risks, and integrate this information with other parts of the public health system.

This legislation is supported by more than 40 health and environmental groups, including Trust for America’s Health, the Breast Cancer Fund, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=283915&&