Tuesday Workshops

October 27, 2009: 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm

D 1: Old Job, New Expectations: Tools for Environmental Health Emergency Preparedness

All Americans face hazards posed by natural and man-made disasters. We accept this fact and live in areas routinely subjected to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, and floods. In addition to these threats, man-made hazards such as chemical releases and deliberately harmful events can also pose risks to public health. This session will include learning from real events and will also feature tools to assist preparedness and response. First, participants will hear a case study on environmental sanitation response to sheltering operations as part of the response to Hurricane Gustav in 2008. Further, environmental and other public health professionals will benefit by learning about the training, planning, and food protection tools developed by the Twin Cities Metro Advanced Practice Center (APC) that are available to help them prepare for and respond to disasters. Another presentation will include a case study on pre-event pandemic influenza planning focusing on how internet-based continuity of operations tools can enhance workforce communication and management before, during, and after an event. Looking forward, the session will conclude with a presentation on the work of CDC’s National Center on Environmental Health and its partners to address the need to develop epidemiologic tools to prepare for and respond to radiological emergencies.

Brian Golob: Old Job, New Expectations: Innovative Tools for Environmental Health Emergency Preparedness

Michael Kosnett: Internet-based Systems for Operationalizing Public Health Workforce Management during a Disaster

Colleen Martin: Development of Epidemiologic Tools for Radiological Emergency Preparedness and Response

Tyler Zerwekh: Gimme Shelter: A Environmental Sanitation Response to Sheltering Operations During Hurricane Gustav

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D 2: Unlocking the Magic Globe: Biodiversity and Nature

Biodiversity and nature have been linked to human health in a number of ways, spanning a broad area of topics and becoming more defined as research in this area progresses. This session will focus on a few of these linkages; for example, discussion of a study conducted in Acre State, Brazil, that determined deforestation is directly associated with malaria risk and found that supporting land management may have significant potential for a public health intervention in the Legal Amazon. This session will also include an overview of EPA’s newly developed Biodiversity and Human Health Initiative to help understand the environmental and social factors affecting disease transmission and a discussion of findings from a study in Eastern Canada that found encouraging regular engagements with nature may be an important area for health promotion intervention. Additionally, this session will explore the potential downside to an overload of organisms in one area, with findings presented from a study of Nebraska’s Platte River where migratory bird populations may pose human health risks because of increases in bird-derived pathogens during migration season.

Sarah Olson: Malaria and Deforestation in Mâncio Lima, Brazil

Montira Pongsiri: The U.S. EPA’s Interdisciplinary Research Initiative on Biodiversity and Human Disease

Jason Vogel: Microbial Water-Quality Effects of Migratory Birds in the Platte River

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D 3: Air Quality Indicators and Public Health Tracking

The Environmental Public Health Tracking program supports state and local projects to compile, link, analyze, and disseminate environmental and health data for engaging stakeholders and guiding actions to improve public health. This session will discuss how the program is overcoming challenges to assess the public health impact of air quality—specifically the public health burden attributable to air pollutants such as ambient PM2.5 and ozone. A presentation on the recommendations from a workshop of governmental officials and researchers from the U.S, Canada, and Europe held in 2008 will review the development of health effects indicators for public health tracking of air pollution. The session also will include a focused discussion on the use of EPA Air Quality System data and Hierarchical Bayesian modeled PM2.5 concentration estimates and will explain differences between the annual averages based on these two data sources.

Fred Dimmick: Air Quality Indicators for EPHT: Why, What and How

Ambarish Vaidyanathan: A Comparison of Annual Average PM2.5 Monitored and Modeled Concentrations

Fuyuen Yip: Methodologies for Environmental Public Health Tracking of Air Pollution Effects

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D 4: What’s Ailing You?: Assessing Food Safety

Over the past several years, the safety and security of our food supply has been challenged as never before. With nearly 40% of the population eating at least one meal away from home daily, maintaining the health of the general public relies largely on improving food service facilities which remain the most common sources of food contamination. In this session, attendees will hear about a longitudinal study where data from a number of outbreaks were collected and assessed to improve our understanding of contributing factors and environmental antecedents associated with outbreaks. In addition, attendees will hear about research conducted in Maryland to determine the effectiveness of county-level inspection programs on preventing food-borne illness. To end, session attendees will get the opportunity to learn how to mitigate some of these food safety issues by learning about the successes of Sacramento County's Food Safety Rating System which was a 2008 Samuel J. Crumbine Award Winner.

Alicia Enriquez: Sacramento County's Food Safety Rating System - 2008 Samuel J. Crumbine Award Winner

Carolyn Monteilh:  Environmental Antecedents and Contributing Factors: Preliminary Data from the EHS-Net Foodborne Outbreak

Joanna Zablotsky: The Impact of Local Environmental Public Health Capacity on Foodborne Illness Morbidity in Maryland

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D 5:  Practical Tools Reducing Home Triggers for Asthma

People with asthma often live in environments that exacerbate their symptoms and minimize their ability to control their asthma. EPA studies have shown that levels of air pollution inside the home are often two to five times higher than outdoor levels. Evidence suggests that although a comprehensive approach to reducing triggers at home may be effective in reducing asthma morbidity, these services may be difficult to offer within clinical settings. This session will provide an overview of practical tools and approaches to making homes healthier for those with asthma, including a review of EPA’s New Indoor AirPLUS label specifications to help home builders implement an indoor air quality strategy and Oregon’s efforts to advance tobacco-free policies in multiunit housing. Participants will learn about the work of Milwaukee’s Sixteenth Street Community Health Center to incorporate healthy home assessments into existing asthma home visits and the work of the Healthy Home Environments for New Yorkers with Asthma program.

Danna Drum Hastings: Smokefree policies in multiunit housing as an asthma intervention

Holly Nannis: Integrating Healthy Homes Into An Asthma Program: Sixteenth Street Community Health Center, Milwauke, WI

Amanda Reddy: Healthy Home Environments for New Yorkers with Asthma (HHENYA): Integrating community services with clinical care.

Henry Slack: EPA’s New Indoor AirPLUS: The Health Component of Green Building

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D 6:  Building Pediatric Environmental Health Capacity among Health Professionals

Environmental health is a neglected issue in most pediatric training programs, yet it is a fundamental and cross-cutting area of major importance. To protect the health of our children, it is important that healthcare professionals understand environmental health issues and the tools used to assess these problems. This session will discuss all phases of the development and implementation of a Pediatric Environmental Health Toolkit created to enable pediatric health care providers with the tools to provide routine guidance to patients on environmental health concerns. It will highlight the FASTEP (From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention) program, which was created to increase capacity to connect, educate and mobilize networks within the pediatric health realm. It will also explore the National Environmental Education Foundation’s Healthcare Provider Initiative, which involves a wide range of stakeholders to advance environmental knowledge among health professionals, and the International Pediatric Environmental Health Leadership Institute, which trains pediatricians about children’s environmental health and improves capacity for leadership and advocacy regarding the prevention of environmentally linked pediatric diseases.

Ruth Etzel: International Pediatric Environmental Health Leadership Institute

Leyla McCurdy:  Integrating Environmental Health into Pediatric Healthcare

Mark Miller:  The Pediatric Environmental Health Toolkit: From Pilot Study to Multi-media Training Programs to Cli

Patrice Sutton: From Advancing Science to Ensuring Prevention

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D 7: Mapping Public Health: Utilizing GIS to Evaluate and Improve Community Health

Geographic information systems (GIS) digitally link data and geography to reveal spatial and temporal relationships among data. Public health professionals use GIS to evaluate geographic relationships that affect health outcomes, public health risks, disease transmission, access to health care, and other public health concerns. Geospatial analyses elucidate mechanisms of and inform planning, advocacy, and interventions for both neighborhood and national public health issues. This session will present efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to effectively incorporate GIS into its surveillance, research, and programmatic activities. In addition, geospatial analyses will elucidate mechanisms of and inform planning, advocacy, and interventions for both neighborhood and national public health issues. Case studies will address pedestrian safety hazards in the Georgia State University area, associations between obesity and the urban social and built environment, and residential segregation with respect to racial disparities and preterm birth.

Dajun Dai: Assessing pedestrian safety hazards around Georgia State University using GIS

Kim Elmore: Leveraging Geospatial Data, Technology, and Methods for Improving the Health of Communities

Michael Kramer: "Race, place, and scale: Residential segregation and racial disparities in very preterm birth

Emily Palmer Taquechel: Assessing pedestrian safety hazards around Georgia State University using GIS

Xingyou Zhang: Impacts of Large-scale Built-Environment on the Obesity Epidemic

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D 8: Breathing Easier: Novel Approaches to Asthma Control

Four thousand people die each year from asthma-related causes, and asthma is a contributing factor in another 7,000 deaths every year. Advances in medicine and public health have helped alleviate some of the burden posed by asthma, but it continues to be a significant public health problem. Participants in this session will learn about the unique efforts of the Fresno County Department of Health to incorporate asthma-related language into the county’s General Plan, the importance of mental health screenings for persons with asthma, and strategies toward increased usage of the National Institutes of Health guidelines related to environmental control practices. This session also will use case studies to train participants in the Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma and other tools supporting best practices for asthma-related interventions in clinical and community settings.

Bindi Gandhi: An Up-Stream Approach to Asthma Prevention: Smart Land Use Development to Prevent Asthma

Emeka Oraka: Asthma and Serious Psychological Distress: Prevalence and Risk Factors among U.S. Adults, 2001-2007

Angkana Roy: Comprehensive Use of Environmental Control Practices Among Children with Asthma

Michele Surricchio: Managing Exposures to Indoor Asthma Triggers: A Skill-Building Institute for Health Care Professionals

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D 9:  If We Could Talk to the Animals: New Understandings of Disease Ecology and Transmission

In this session, participants will hear analyses of the link between animal and human infectious disease transmission pathways from the developing and developed world, learn about new tools to unify data sources to assess the emergence and resurgence of infectious disease, and hear perspectives on how more coordinated policies are needed to address the important intersection of animal, wildlife, and human health. This session will present an analysis of Triatoma infestans vector distribution to better understand the risk for Chagas disease as well as how modeling techniques were used to estimate daily vehicular contact rates between farms and simulate the potential impact of a single pandemic-influenza infected farm in a dense broiler chicken production region in the United States on disease transmission. As evidenced by the recent H1N1 outbreak, understanding pathogen movement may be critical for preventing pandemic disease in humans. The session will also provide information about HealthScapes, a Web-based infrastructure to manage, analyze, and share data to advance knowledge and discovery, and will include an introduction to integrated infectious disease policy-making.

Megan Christenson: Predictors of Triatoma infestans infestation and Chagas disease

Patricia Farnese: Wildlife, Wildlands and Infectious Disease

Micah Hahn: HealthScapes: A Web Resource for Visualization and Analysis of Infectious Disease

Jessica Leibler: Modeling risk of between-farm transmission of avian influenza in the United States from vehicular tr

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D 10:  Mining for Answers: The Long Road in Asbestos Research

The adverse health effects of inhaled asbestos, including mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis, have been recognized for several decades. However, many questions remain about the mechanisms of asbestos and non-asbestos fiber toxicity and the best practices to prevent human exposures. In this session, the US Geological Survey will describe an interdisciplinary approach detailing the occurrences, characteristics, and geological settings of asbestos across the United States. Additional presentations will address health risks from naturally occurring asbestos and efforts to protect the general public from exposures near industry or construction work sites. Finally, an epidemiologic study utilizing improved methodological approaches will demonstrate the relationship between asbestos fiber dimension and cumulative exposure in determining respiratory disease risk.

Martin Harper: Naturally Occurring Asbestos (NOA) in Context

Geoffrey Plumlee: An earth science perspective on health-related research needs for asbestos

Leslie Stayner: An epidemiologic study of the role of chrysotile respiratory disease risk in exposed workers asbestos fiber dimensions in determining

John Yetman: Methods for controlling naturally occuring asbestos at construction sites

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D 11: Innovations in Human Exposure Assessment

People can be exposed to chemicals at various stages of life and through multiple routes of exposure. Ongoing assessment and research on the nature of chemical exposures is the topic of this session. As scientific tools and methods are advanced, new information can be gleaned from studies assessing human exposure. Presentations in this session convey lessons learned from case studies analyzing acrylamide and glycidamide exposure using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data, the effects of chemicals in personal care products using urine and serum samples, levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers and polybrominated biphenyl using NHANES serum data, perinatal exposure to perchlorate, thiocyanate, and nitrate in maternal and fetal fluids, and from one study demonstrating the application of a generalized logit model to assess microenvironment exposures in children.

Ben Blount: Perinatal exposure to perchlorate, thiocyanate, and nitrate in mothers and newborns

Antonia Calafat: Chemicals used in personal care products: Biomonitoring advances

B. Rey DeCastro: Exposure Weights Can Be Obtained from a Straightforward Statistical Model of Time-Location Data

Andreas Sjodin: LEVELS OF POLYBROMINATED DIPHENYL ETHERS AND POLYBROMINATED BIPHENYL IN THE NHANES 2003-2004

Hubert Vesper: EXPOSURE TO ACRYLAMIDE AND ITS METABOLITE GLYCIDAMIDE IN THE GENERAL POPULATION

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D 12: Are We There Yet?: Emerging Research in Healthy Transportation

This session will include a presentation introducing a 21st-Century Transportation Agenda that outlines cross-cutting strategies and policy opportunities to create an equitable, multimodal transportation system which emphasizes health, safety, and the environment. Representatives of the Walk Friendly Communities program will discuss a forthcoming Walkability Assessment Tool to examine a range of conditions and facilities related to walking. Case studies to be presented include an investigation of route-to-park walkability in Atlanta and a study examining the association between traffic emissions and respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes.

Vickie Boothe: Health Effects of Estimated Exposure to Traffic-related Pollutants in the City of Atlanta

James Dills: Objectively Measuring Route-to-Park Walkability: Data from Atlanta, GA"

Janani Srikantharajah: "A 21st Century Transportation Agenda for Health, Equity, and Environmental Quality

Carl Sundstrom: Promoting and Evaluating Walkability through the Walk Friendly Communities Program

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D 13: Rising Temperatures and the Environmental Impacts of Climate Change

While climate change represents a global health threat, its impacts are unevenly distributed across geographies and populations and will necessarily be addressed at local and regional levels. In this session, presenters will discuss the observed impact of urban land use patterns on extreme heat events in U.S. cities and explore the projected frequency of extreme precipitation events and severity of climate change-induced air pollution in the Great Lakes Region. This session will highlight the importance of identifying characteristics of vulnerable populations, stressing the importance of local vulnerability assessment and adaptive strategy development. The use of thermal remote sensing data to improve understanding of intra-urban variations in risk from extreme heat events will also be discussed.

Daniel Johnson: Climate Change Framed as a Public Health Issue

Helene Margolis: Heat Vulnerable Communities and Climate Change

Jonathan Patz: Climate change & Water & Air Quality: Future scenarios of risks and co-benefits, Great Lakes Region

Brian Stone: Increasing frequency of extreme heat events in sprawling U.S.cities

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D 14: Biomonitoring: Public Health, Policy, and Regulatory Implications

Biomonitoring, a tool used to measure people’s exposure to environmental chemicals, has been a programmatic focus at the Environmental Health Laboratory of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health for more than three decades. As biomonitoring’s presence grows in states and elsewhere, it is necessary to examine its implications in the public health, regulatory and policy arenas. Federal, state, and local health officials increasingly rely on biomonitoring data to make public health decisions. This session is an interdisciplinary panel of experts offers varying points of view on biomonitoring from a regulatory, research, industry, and advocacy perspective.

Lesa Aylward: Biomonitoring Equivalents (BEs) as screening tools for interpretation of human biomonitoring data

Sarah Brozena: Important Considerations in Designing Biomonitoring Programs to Support Public Health Policy

Daniella Gratale: Biomonitoring: The Advocacy Perspective

David Miller: Biomonitoring Data at the US EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs: Current and Future Use

Kristen Welker-Hood: PSR Confronting Toxics Biomonitoring Project: Exploring Health Professionals Chemical Exposures

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D 15: Public Health with an Ocean View, Part 1: From Tools to Practice

These back-to-back sessions discuss the public health impacts from our interactions with oceans, coasts, and the Great Lakes. In Part I, From Tools to Practice, we use presentations and demonstrations to highlight ocean-related tools and systems that have practical public health applications. Tools include an operational forecasting system for harmful algal blooms (HABs), beach conditions and health information hotline for the Gulf of Mexico, appropriate public health response strategies for CyanoHAB risks in Florida, an early warning bulletin for the Razor Clam Fishery in Washington state, and CDC’s HAB illness surveillance system and its public health application in Florida.

Lorraine Backer: Harmful Algal Bloom Illness-related Surveillance System (HABISS)

Caroline Collins: Public Health Application of CDC's Harmful Algal Bloom Illness Surveillance System: Florida's Experi

Barbara Hickey: The PNW HAB Bulletin: Early Warning for the Razor Clam Fishery in Washington State

Katherine Nierenberg: Gulf of Mexico HAB: Beach conditions and Health Information Hotline

Andrew Reich: CyanoHAB Risks in Florida: Developing Appropriate Public Health Response Strategies

Richard Stumpf: Development of an Operational Forecasting System for Harmful Algal Blooms

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