New Mexico Environmental Public Health Tracking Program
About Environmental Public Health Tracking in New Mexico
The New Mexico Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, also known as NM EPHT and New Mexico Tracking, is an outlet for environmental health data and information, helping the people of New Mexico understand the connection between health and environment. We serve as a resource for environmental health knowledge, providing the platforms to establish and broaden epidemiology, response and health promotion in environmental health.
One of our key products is this website, designed for people to access New Mexico-specific epidemiological information and learn about environmental health. It features a data search function with options to query and map data, downloadable reports with numeric data combined with public health context, and an array of health education resources.
Tracking in New Mexico
New Mexico Tracking activities focus on:
- Environmental public health epidemiology, response, and education.
- Epidemiologic and statistical analyses.
- Enhancing, geocoding, and developing core data sets.
- Data linkages of environmental exposure and health outcome data.
- Environmental public health promotion, digital media, and risk communication.
- Contributing to national Tracking by submitting the Nationally Consistent Data and Measures (NCDMs) and metadata.
Data analyses aid environmental health surveillance in New Mexico by improving our ability to define exposures and related disease occurrences and to respond to community concerns. The information collected for NM Tracking and our corresponding health education messages have has been used to inform public health interventions to reduce environmental exposures and potentially related diseases.
Funding, Operations, and National Contributions
We are a proud part of the New Mexico Department of Health. We operate in the Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau of the Epidemiology and Response Division where we work closely with our bureau partners on various environmental health epidemiology, surveillance, and health promotion projects.
Our work is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH). New Mexico is among the 33 CDC Grantees in the EPHT Network. For more than a decade, the Environmental Public Health Tracking Program has collected, integrated, and analyzed non-infectious disease and environmental data from this nationwide network of partners to deliver information and data to protect the nation from health issues arising from or directly related to environmental factors.
We contribute to the national integrated environmental and public health information system operated by the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program at CDC. At the local, state, and national levels, the Tracking Program uses a network of people and information systems to deliver a core set of health, exposure, and hazards data, information summaries, and tools to enable analysis, visualization and reporting of insights drawn from data. New Mexico is part of the network by collecting, analyzing, and submitting Nationally Consistent Data and Measures, serving on the multi-state workgroups, and contributing to health communication packages.