Environmental metrics for community health improvement.
Environmental factors greatly affect human health. Accordingly, environmental metrics are a key part of the community health information base. We review environmental metrics relevant to community health, including measurements of contaminants in environmental media, such as air, water, and food; measurements of contaminants in people (biomonitoring); measurements of features of the built environment that affect health; and measurements of "upstream" environmental conditions relevant to health. We offer a set of metrics (including unhealthy exposures, such as pollutants, and health-promoting assets, such as parks and green space) selected on the basis of relevance to health outcomes, magnitude of associated health outcomes, corroboration in the peer-reviewed literature, and data availability, especially at the community level, and we recommend ways to use these metrics most effectively.
Jakubowski
Benjamin
B
National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 30341-3717, USA.
Frumkin
Howard
H
D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004779:Environment Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006291:Health Policy; D006292:Health Priorities; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D018505:Waste Management / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*