Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) & Climate Change

The Environmental Toxicology Program in the Bureau of Environmental Health has developed a climate assessment approach that leverages the combined resources of the Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) tool and the CDC Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) framework.

The approach actively engages stakeholders in query-based analyses of interactive data on health (e.g., asthma, heart attack, heat stress) and environmental (e.g., air quality, vector borne disease, flood zone mapping) impacts.  By using actual data, stakeholders are able to examine community-level disease trends over time and create meaningful messaging when communicating the health impacts of climate change.

For example, during a recent partnership with the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and the municipalities of Springfield and Williamsburg, this framework was used as part of a Health Impact Assessment to evaluate strategies to reduce the burden of heat-related events and recommend forward-looking energy efficiency measures in municipal buildings.  These methods allowed the communities to integrate baseline health date, population vulnerabilities, and local climate projections to consider evidenced-based climate action strategies.

You can learn more by visiting the Climate Change section of the EPHT portal. For further information or more specific questions, please feel free to contact Margaret Rounds in the Environmental Toxicology Program via email at margaret.rounds@state.ma.us or by phone at (617) 624-5757.