A Review of Public Health Air Surveillance Evaluation Project

Abstract

P-574 Introduction: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the public health departments in the States of Maine, New York and Wisconsin have collaborated in the Public Health Air Surveillance Evaluation (PHASE) project. The PHASE project was designed to develop, evaluate, and demonstrate the advantages and limitations of different methods of generating air quality data that could be systematically and routinely linked with public health surveillance data as part of the CDC's Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. Methods: The three public health departments collected health tracking data associated with cardiovascular and respiratory health events. In doing so, the states developed consistent case definitions and addressed spatial representativeness of the health data. EPA provided air quality data for ozone and fine particles based on ambient air monitors, from an application of the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) predictive model, and for statistically developed estimates using the air monitors and the predictive model. With these air quality data sets, the three states applied a “case-crossover” analysis technique to evaluate the association between the health and air quality data. Results: The statistical technique produced less error than the CMAQ predictions when compared to a set of independent air quality monitor data. Figure 1 compares the fine particle CMAQ predictions and the ambient fine particle data in metropolitan New York City. Figure 2 compared the statistical technique estimates and the ambient fine particle data in metropolitan New York City. The qualitative contrast shows the effect of the statistical technique. The associations between air quality measures and health data were found to be generally consistent with time series epidemiologic studies.FIGURE 1: Comparison of hierarchical Bayesian model and monitor data (PM 2.5).Thirty-six km grid cell covering New York City metropolitan area.FIGURE 2: Comparison of CMAQ model and monitor data (PM 2.5). Thirty-six km grid cell covering New York City metropolitan area.Discussion and Conclusions: This collaboration demonstrated the ability to link surveillance air quality and health data. This will enable a legislative mandate to establish environmental public health tracking in the U.S. The techniques have been evaluated and implementation activities are underway. Next steps include: a menu-driven software tool to link health and air quality data and readily available air quality data available. This will enable health department professionals to link and analyze air quality and health data routinely.