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National Health Tracking Network Fact Sheet

A Nationwide Health Tracking Network Can Help Prevent Disease

The State PIRGs are joining forces to advocate for a nationwide health tracking network to monitor chronic diseases and potentially related environmental exposures. The network would give public health officials, health care providers, and communities the tools to respond to and prevent chronic disease, and to research and avert environmental threats to public health. The Nationwide Health Tracking Network would be coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), building on the current infectious disease tracking network. Here's how the network would work:

  • A Health Tracking Network in all 50 states, tracking respiratory diseases like asthma, birth defects, cancers, and neurological diseases like Alzheimer's. The tracking of exposures would start with PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, and other water and air contaminants.

  • An Early Warning System to alert communities to immediate health crises such as heavy metal and pesticide poisonings.

  • Pilot Programs establishing 20 regional and state programs, providing flexibility for local officials and community groups to gather more information and address local priorities.

  • Federal, State, and Local Rapid Response capability to investigate clusters, outbreaks, and emerging threats.

  • Support of Community Interests and Scientific Research to further health tracking efforts, including input from local groups on the design and implementation of the program. Similarly, the network must honor the community's right to know by ensuring public access to information made available.

Tracking: A Common-Sense Investment

Investing in prevention through these five components is estimated to cost the federal government $275 million annually - less than 0.1% of the current annual economic cost of treating and living with chronic disease. We can invest $275 million annually - less than $1 for every person - in our nation's public health and chronic disease prevention, or we can watch the $325 billion in annual chronic diseases and the numbers of lives lost continue to climb.
Tracking Disease: A Cornerstone Of Prevention

As part of the nation's commitment to protecting public health, America's public health system tracks and monitors infectious diseases. But we have not made the critical investment in preventing most chronic diseases. When a cluster of childhood cancer is suspected in a community, there are many questions we don't have the tools to answer.

By knowing when and where chronic diseases occur and what links they have to environmental factors, public health officials will have the information they need to prevent illness, and communities will have the tools to protect themselves.
Our Long-Term Goal
The long-term vision is to develop a program in which a citizen or health care provider could enter a zip code into a database and find out the prevalence of cancer or birth defects, the average exposure of the population to toxins linked to cancer or birth defects, and the known sources of those toxins.