Thursday, December 27, 2012

CDC Tracking Health, Community & Climate

National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network Releases Health Behavior, Community Design, and Climate Change Data

The Tracking Network has just released some exciting new data additions related to health behaviors, community design, and climate change.
 
Health Behaviors: Smoking Prevalence
A new Health Behaviors module is now available. When examining chronic diseases and their potential connection to the environment, it is important to consider other health risk factors that could play a role in their development. Four personal behaviors that can impact chronic diseases are:
  • lack of physical activity,
  • poor nutrition,
  • tobacco use, and
  • excessive alcohol consumption.
The Tracking Network currently provides health behavior data on the number and percentage of adults who smoke. CDC plans to add data on other health behaviors to the Tracking Network soon.
Community Design: Access to Parks
Data on Access to Parks is also new to the Community Design module of the Tracking Network. Parks are an important part of a community. This data will provide a better picture of the access people have to places where they can participate in physical activity. These data can be used to understand how improving access to healthy community places, such as parks, may increase physical activity among community members.

Climate Change: Extreme Heat Days and Events
CDC has added data on extreme heat days and events to the Tracking Network’s Climate Change module. These data will allow you to look at temperature, heat index, and number of days to define extremely hot days and extreme heat events.

Visit the Tracking Network today to explore the new data. (CDC)

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