Abstract
The incorporation of environmental surveillance in the field of public health policies is a relatively recent demand in Brazil. One of the major challenges in environmental health surveillance is defining its object and the specificity of its practice. The expanded concept of exposure, treated as a set of complex relations between a society and the environment, and not as a personal attribute, is central to the definition of indicators and should guide the practice of environmental surveillance in the health sector. Among the difficulties encountered in applying this concept within the Brazilian Health System, is the need to restructure health surveillance activities and to form multidisciplinary teams capable of dialoguing with other sectors. Furthermore, information systems capable of aiding in health situation analysis and decision making must be constructed. Taking this into consideration, a review of the object and concepts of environmental health surveillance was undertaken and the challenges with respect to its implementation in the Brazilian Health System were identified.
Highlights
The global environmental crisis has obliged all sectors of society to revise concepts and values, expliciting conflicts of interest and evincing the unsustainability of the current model of development
A review of the literature was conducted, focusing on the object and concepts of environmental health surveillance and the challenges to be met upon its implementation within the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) [Brazil’s Unified Health System] were identified
Some conceptual models have been proposed for the analysis of environmental risks to health. Noteworthy among these are: the association, proposed by Thacker et al[17] (1996), between sources of risk and diseases; the relation between pressure-state-response, suggested by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and the model for constructing environmental indicators elaborated by Corvalan et al[7] (1997)
Summary
Christovam Barcellosa,* and Luiz Antônio Dias Quitériob aDepartamento de Informações em Saúde. Secretaria de Estado da Saúde de São Paulo.
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