Environmental health risk assessment methodology for overseas military deployment

The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health is develop ing a framework for evaluating environmental health risks that may affect t he health of military personnel deployed overseas. Based on quantitative ri sk assessment, traditional public health evaluation, and risk prioritizatio n methods, this framework was originally designed by The Johns Hopkins Univ ersity to assess environmental health risks in urban environments. The meth odology is a three-tiered approach: Tier One focuses on short-term (acute) catastrophic risks, and Tiers Two and Three focus on longer-term health ris k issues. A detailed description of the Tier One approach and a demonstrati on using U.S. data are presented in this article.