This video provides an overview of the Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking website and its tools and features.
Transcript:
The Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking website is a helpful resource that people can use to find data and information about diseases such as asthma, and environmental hazards such as climate change.
This is the Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking landing page. The leaves around the magnifying glass represent the major content areas on the website. You can click on them to connect to topic specific data and information.
From the landing page, you can also navigate through the website by selecting from one of the drop-down menus at the top of the page. From the “About” menu, you can navigate to information about the CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, about success stories, about the use of Tracking in public health actions. You can access our newsletter, reports and outreach materials, tutorials on how to use the Tracking site, and other resources and information about the data and content presented on this site. From the “Planning and Tools” menu you can find information and access tools that can assist public planners and decision makers to incorporate environmental health concerns into policy and planning activities. From the “Health” and “Environment” menus you can access the health and environmental content and data presented on this site. From the “Inspections & Licenses” menu, you can find information and data on inspections conducted by the Bureau of Climate and Environmental Health.
So, let’s go back and take a closer look at the environment menu, and select “Climate Change”. The climate change content page contains background information on climate change and information on how to minimize the health impacts of climate change. Most pages also contain an interactive data view, directly embedded into the page, which provides fast access to local trend data. On the climate change page, the interactive data display shows 2 climate projection data measures. One for projected annual days of rain over an inch, and the other for the projected annual days over 90 degrees. From this page you can also access the climate enhance community profile which contains community specific baseline health, environmental, and social indicators that can inform climate and health adaptation planning. You can also access the “Vulnerability Mapping Tool” that allows users to create custom maps that identify vulnerable populations and climate hazards, such as flood zones and storm surge zones.