Environmental Public Health Tracking: Taking Action With Data

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Encourage residents to check their air quality forecast.
• Encourage residents to avoid the outdoors on days when air quality is poor.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Train doctors to talk to their patients about air quality, especially those with chronic health conditions.
• Promote airnow.gov, a way to check local air quality forecast, on social media channels.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Encourage the use of lower-polluting diesel technologies among local and regional transit authorities.
• Promote active transportation programs such as safe routes to school and walking school buses.
• Encourage worksites to incentivize active commuting (e.g., biking, walking).

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Promote the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s school flag program to alert the community of outdoor air quality.
• Offer incentives for using public transportation.
• Consider roadside vegetative barriers to reduce air pollution by roadways.

National or local laws and policies

• Work with community planning and design staff to develop bicycle and pedestrian master plans.
• Increase access to public transportation systems.
• Promote school policies that limit exposure to exhaust from school bus idling.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Promote asthma self-management education.
• Ensure asthma patients have an up-to-date asthma action plan.
• Create educational materials that are culturally appropriate and written in plain language.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Offer environmental home assessments to identify and remove asthma triggers.
• Train doctors to create asthma management plans with their patients.
• Encourage homeowners to practice integrated pest management.
• Create a circle of support among families, clinicians, and school nurses.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Encourage child care centers and schools to identify environmental asthma triggers via a facility walkthrough.
• Ensure students with asthma have an updated asthma action plan on file at school.
• Train teachers, child care workers, and school nurses how to administer rescue inhaler medication.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Promote the school flag program to alert the community to outdoor air quality.
• Promote nonsmoking environments and smoking cessation options for community members.

National or local laws and policies

• Promote best practices for cleaning and pest management in schools and child care centers.
• Promote school policies that limit school bus idling.
• Encourage property owners and operators to adopt smoke-free policies in apartment buildings.
• Promote housing rehabilitation loan and grant programs.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Promote sun safety behaviors, especially to parents, school staff, and adults who work outside.
• Educate individuals about skin cancer and its risk factors.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Train doctors to talk to their patients about sunscreen and sun safety behaviors.
• Train daycare and school staff to talk to their students about sun safety behaviors.
• Train supervisors who have staff that work outdoors (e.g., construction workers) to adopt sun safety behaviors.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Offer free sunscreen stations in heavily visited outdoor areas such as parks, playgrounds, and community pools.
• Encourage daycares and schools to have sunscreen on hand for students to use.
• Encourage businesses with outdoor worksites to offer free sunscreen to workers.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Develop and implement a public awareness campaign to highlight the dangers of indoor tanning.
• Increase availability of shaded areas in parks, public gathering spaces, and school grounds.

National or local laws and policies

• Promote sun safety policies at daycares and schools.
• Encourage organizations and businesses that have employees or customers outdoors for long periods to consider policies for protecting exposed skin from the sun.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Educate residents that state law requires a carbon monoxide detector on every floor in homes, duplexes, and apartments.
• Educate residents about the signs and symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Educate residents not to use portable generators indoors.
• Encourage residents to have their furnaces inspected annually.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Train doctors to ask if there is a carbon monoxide detector in the home.
• Train parents of hockey players and figure skaters to identify and respond to the signs and symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Encourage enclosed recreational arenas (such as ice rinks and venues that host motorbike/truck events) to frequently monitor air quality and install carbon monoxide detectors.
• Encourage enclosed recreational arenas to have a policy in place to respond to carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Give enclosed recreational arenas copies of Resources for Enclosed Ice Arena Management.
• Encourage enclosed recreational arenas to hang posters or flyers with the signs and symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Encourage enclosed ice rinks to switch to electric ice resurfacers (e.g., Zamboni ®).

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Partner with hardware stores to promote and/or discount carbon monoxide detectors.
• Send out press releases, social media posts, and public service announcements each fall that talk about carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Encourage property owners to make sure required carbon monoxide detectors are present and maintained in their properties.

National or local laws and policies

• Work with recreational arena owners and operators’ organizational bodies to implement air quality best practices in Wisconsin arenas.
• Consider policies that require carbon monoxide detectors in public indoor spaces where gas-powered tools, vehicles, or appliances are used.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Encourage residents to utilize available public and active transportation infrastructure (e.g., buses, bike lanes) in order to:
  • Increase physical activity.
  • Improve air quality.
  • Decrease the number of vehicles on the road.
• Educate residents about the health benefits of physical activity.
• Attend community planning meetings and advocate for parks and trails to be located close to residential areas.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Educate drivers to share the road with cyclists and pedestrians to reduce vehicle motor crash fatalities.
• Encourage drivers to carpool to school and work to minimize the number of vehicles on the road and shorten commute times.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Promote active transportation programs such as safe routes to school and walking school buses.
• Encourage worksites to incentivize active commuting (e.g., biking, walking).

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Promote and incentivize the development of parks, open space, and trails within walking distance of homes, and help make sure that the routes to these places are safe.
• Build and maintain sidewalks, crosswalks, bike racks, and bike paths near routes between parks, trails, and residential areas.
• Plant trees and other vegetation in strategic locations to act as a buffer between highways and residential areas and schools.

National or local laws and policies

• Work with community planning and design staff to create development patterns and zoning codes that allow work, school, home, and essential services to be closer together.
• Work with the Mayor’s office and other community departments to create a Vision Zero Action Plan to eliminate motor vehicle-related fatalities.
• Control the speed of traffic on roads with high bike and pedestrian traffic by:
  • Setting low speed limits.
  • Using traffic calming measures like speed bumps.
  • Enforcing traffic laws.
• Prioritize environmental justice and health equity during the project, plan, or policy approval process to increase access to services and decrease the burden of exposure to environmental hazards, such as highways.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Inform community members of the common signs and symptoms of COPD.
• Encourage those who use tobacco products to join cessation support groups.
• Create educational materials that are culturally appropriate and written in plain language.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Encourage people living with COPD, family, and friends to join or create a circle of support.
• Encourage doctors to collaborate with patients to develop a written, patient-centered COPD management plan.
• Promote participation in smoking cessation initiatives to community members living with and without COPD.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Engage adolescents to not start smoking or to stop smoking through anti-smoking promotion programs.
• Ensure workers in occupations at high-risk for COPD, such as mining, steelwork, rolling and finishing mills, and indoor/house cleaning, are informed of signs and symptoms, and are aware of prevention strategies.
• Arrange vaccine clinics for workers in high-risk occupations for COPD to prevent worsening illness.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Promote non-smoking environments and smoking cessation options for community members.
• Identify workplace exposures associated with COPD and ensure prevention efforts are put in place.

National or local laws and policies

• Advocate for stronger tobacco product regulation and taxes.
• Encourage property owners and operators to adopt smoke-free policies in apartment buildings.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Educate residents about the signs and symptoms of a heart attack.
• Educate residents about the connection between air quality and heart attacks.
• Encourage residents to check their air quality forecast.
• Encourage residents to avoid the outdoors on days when air quality is poor.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Train doctors to talk to their patients about air quality, especially those with heart disease and high blood pressure.
• Promote airnow.gov, a way to check local air quality forecast, on social media channels.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Encourage the use of lower-polluting diesel technologies among local and regional transit authorities.
• Encourage worksites to incentivize active commuting (e.g., biking, walking).

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Promote the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s school flag program to alert the community of outdoor air quality.
• Offer incentives for using public transportation.

National or local laws and policies

• Encourage property owners and operators to adopt smoke-free policies in apartment buildings.
• Work with community planning and design staff to develop bicycle and pedestrian master plans. Increase access to public transportation systems.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Educate residents about the signs and symptoms of heat stress.
• Educate residents about risk factors for heat stress and tips for staying cool.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Train supervisors of outdoor worksites and recreational areas about how to prevent, identify, and treat heat stress.
• Train doctors to talk to patients who are active outdoors for work or play about heat stress prevention.
• Train coaches and teachers to prevent, identify, and treat heat stress at sports practice and recess.
• Check on older, sick, or disabled individuals during heat waves.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Utilize heat stress toolkits.
• Partner with businesses to create new cooling centers.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Work with the media to warn residents about upcoming excessively hot days.
• Coordinate and promote cooling centers during excessively hot days.
• Consider incorporating certain types of permeable pavement into sidewalk, road, and parking lot projects.
• Increase availability of shaded areas in parks, public gathering spaces, and school grounds.
• Plant trees in strategic locations.
• Promote and incentivize rain gardens, green roofs, and other bioretention systems in lieu of heat retaining surfaces.

National or local laws and policies

• Establish a protocol for responding to extreme heat days.
• Encourage organizations that have employees or customers outdoors to have policies for handling heat stress incidents.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Encourage families in high-risk areas to get their children tested for lead poisoning at the appropriate ages.
• Encourage community members to seek out certified lead-safe renovation contractors.
• Educate people who work with lead on the job or as a hobby on ways to reduce their exposure.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Educate doctors about the importance of having children tested for lead poisoning.
• Educate doctors to ask patients about their jobs and hobbies that might involve lead.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Educate staff at worksites that have lead about how to prevent lead from going home.
• Educate contractors about the advantages of lead certification.
• Work with child care settings to talk with parents of children in their care.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Encourage neighborhood organizations to talk to residents about lead hazards.
• Eliminate lead-based paint in homes.

National or local laws and policies

• Encourage worksites to develop policies to minimize exposure to lead and lead dust leaving the facility.
• Promote existing policy around certified lead-safe renovation.
• Promote housing rehabilitation loan and grant programs.

Individual: Knowledge, attitudes, skills

• Promote tick prevention activities such as using repellent, treating clothing with permethrin, doing tick self-checks, and removing ticks promptly, especially among hikers and outdoor recreation seekers.
• Make yards less hospitable to ticks through landscaping techniques.

Interpersonal: Family, friends, social networks

• Educate doctors about how to talk to patients about tick prevention.
• Educate doctors on current guidelines for diagnosis and treatment.
• Encourage veterinarians to talk to their clients about flea and tick prevention on their pets.
• Post about tick prevention activities on social media outlets.

Organizational: Organizations, schools, workplaces

• Work with camp associations to incorporate Lyme disease into orientation.
• Encourage supervisors of grassy and wooded worksites to educate their staff on tick prevention and offer repellent.

Community: Design, access, connectedness, spaces

• Encourage outdoor recreation areas to offer or sell repellent on site.
• Encourage outdoor recreation areas to post signage about tick prevention.
• Clear overgrown grass and brush along trails.

National or local laws and policies

• Encourage organizations involved with outdoor activities to have policies to increase customer and employee awareness of Lyme disease and methods for prevention.
• Encourage campgrounds and outdoor recreation areas to post information on ticks and prevention of infection and sell repellent on site.