National Tracking Awareness Week: Helping inform critical public health decisions

This is National Tracking Awareness Week, which highlights the work of environmental public health tracking programs in Arizona and elsewhere.

Tracking efforts include monitoring community health, identifying communities at risk, supporting epidemiological studies, educating the community, informing local planners, and providing input to health policy decisions. That’s no small task, and it’s a big part of what we do at ADHS.

The Arizona Tracking Network’s data explorer at gis.azdhs.gov has information on hundreds of environmental and health topics. This helps public health professionals assess trends and events to identify vulnerable populations and make decisions to improve public health.

Here are some examples:

The Arizona Tracking Network and Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program developed a Lead Poisoning Risk Mapping Tool that provides screening recommendations to health care providers and encourages parents living in high-risk areas to get children tested.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Arizona Tracking Network developed data dashboards to display information on cases, hospitalizations, vaccinations, and other critical metrics.
Our tracking data shows that Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal have the highest occurrence of heat-related illness, helping inform county-specific strategies for protecting people.

Members of the public can use data explorer as well to research trends and events in their communities and explore our website to learn more. Learn how you can protect your health by visiting the tracking quick report and entering a street address and city to get a snapshot of environmental health in your immediate area.

By Carla Berg|2022-07-15T11:20:46-07:00July 15th, 2022|General, Preparedness|Comments Off

About the Author: Carla Berg

Carla Berg is the Deputy Director for Public Health Services at the Arizona Department of Health Services. A native Arizonan, Carla has been a part of the ADHS team since 2008. She began her public health work at ADHS as an epidemiologist within the Tuberculosis Control Program. Since then, she has held roles as Chief Strategy Officer, Bureau Chief for Special Licensing, and Office Chief for Disease Integration & Services. In her current role, she leads the divisions of Public Health Preparedness, Public Health Licensing, and Public Health Prevention Services in addition to health equity and strategic initiatives. She also provides leadership to the Arizona Health Improvement Plan (AzHIP), a multi-sector partnership focused on priorities to improve the health of Arizonans. Carla holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Health Sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.