Population health environmental indicators: ecologic monitoring of environment-related health and disease trends

Background: Current State of the Environment (SoE) reporting focuses primar ily on indicators directly related to the physical environment such as clim ate, and air, water and soil quality. As the environment has both direct an d indirect effects on human health, an opportunity exists to include enviro nment-related human disease indicators as an SoE indicator theme. Objective: To develop a set of population health environmental indicators ( PHEIs, cps) that can illustrate environment-related disease (ERD) trends at the population level. Methods: A literature review was conducted on environmental health monitori ng and the current knowledge of environmental effects on human health. Key PHEIs were identified and routine health data collections accessed and anal ysed to illustrate temporal and geographic trends. Results: Diseases with a n environmental aetiology are tabulated and examples are given of the type and range of PHEIs that can be developed for an Australian geographic area. Conclusions: illustrating environmental degradation in terms of resultant h uman diseases is a potent tool for promoting environmental protection measu res. This paper examines a range of PHEIs that may be used as indicators of both environmental disease and environmental quality. Implications: PHEIs could be developed as a useful SoE indicator theme, and as a tool to help foster the convergence which is occurring between enviro nmental health and public health fields.