Population health environmental indicators: ecologic monitoring of environment-related health and disease trends.
BACKGROUND
Current State of the Environment (SoE) reporting focuses primarily on indicators directly related to the physical environment such as climate, and air, water and soil quality. As the environment has both direct and indirect effects on human health, an opportunity exists to include environment-related human disease indicators as an SoE indicator theme.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a set of population health environmental indicators (PHEIs, phi s) that can illustrate environment-related disease (ERD) trends at the population level.


METHODS
A literature review was conducted on environmental health monitoring and the current knowledge of environmental effects on human health. Key PHEIs were identified and routine health data collections accessed and analysed to illustrate temporal and geographic trends.


RESULTS
Diseases with an environmental aetiology are tabulated and examples are given of the type and range of PHEIs that can be developed for an Australian geographic area.


CONCLUSIONS
Illustrating environmental degradation in terms of resultant human diseases is a potent tool for promoting environmental protection measures. This paper examines a range of PHEIs that may be used as indicators of both environmental disease and environmental quality.


CONCLUSIONS
PHEIs could be developed as a useful SoE indicator theme, and as a tool to help foster the convergence which is occurring between environmental health and public health fields.
Sladden
T
T
Northern Rivers Institute of Health and Research, Northern Rivers Area Health Service, New South Wales, Australia. tslad@doh.health.nsw.gov.au
Beard
J
J
Simpson
J
J
Luckie
K
K
D001315:Australia; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D004463:Ecology; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans