Trust for Americas's Health

What is Trust for America's Health and why do Americans Needs a Better System to Track and Understand Chronic Diseases?

For more than a quarter-century, we have made huge efforts to protect our air and water quality and preserving areas of beauty and biological diversity essential to a healthy environment. Despite this progress, and many public health breakthroughs over the past 100 years, we have lost our focus on protecting our communities from health concerns appearing from exposure to environmental contaminants. Trust for America's Health is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to protect the health and safety of all communities from current and emerging health threats by increasing the fundamentals of our public health defenses. Chronic diseases are now the number one killer in the United States, accounting for seven of every ten deaths each year. Scientific research has identified alarming trends over the last decade: 75 percent increase in asthma; 70 percent increase in diabetes; 50 percent increase in learning disabilities; 20 percent increase in neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.

For example, birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, about 6,500 deaths annually. For some groups in the United States, such as African Americans, premature birth and low birthweight are the leading causes of infant mortality. In addition, the reporting of certain birth defects and associated conditions have increased rapidly.

20 percent of birth defects have known causes however the causes of 80 percent of all birth defects and related conditions remain mysterious, even as evidence mounts that environmental factors—including diet, personal behavior, and exposure to toxic substances and pollutants—play an significant role in the development of these terrible and expensive conditions.

This should be a wake-up call to strengthen and improve our nation's public health policy. The data shows that despite much progress in clinical medicine, we know far too little about why rates of birth defects and related conditions remain high and appear to be escalating in many situations.

There is also insufficient data on human exposure to the wide array of toxicants released into the environment in the U.S. every year. Many of the chemicals used in agriculture and in our homes have been found to cause birth defects, but there is little research on safe human exposure levels. Human studies are the most challenging by far, in part because they require adequate tracking of diseases and exposures, and adequate funding of research.

There are a number of well-known environmental agents associated with harmful effects on a developing baby. These range from the mercury fish poisoning that led to Japan's outbreak of congenital disabilities and mental retardation known as "Minimata" disease, to the connection between folic acid deficiency and such neural tube defects as spina bifida in the United States. But much more information is needed if researchers are to identify other potential threats to children's health. Little is known about the human health effects of the estimated 15,000 chemicals produced in large quantities. Even more alarming, nothing is known about the human health effects of two-thirds of the chemicals produced in the U.S.

We know how to create and build the tracking systems that public health professionals need to address the social, biological and environmental factors that are contributors to chronic disease and disability in America. If we do not look for answers, we will never know the causes, and thus, will be unable to prevent these costly and life-threatening conditions. Despite gains in treatment and clinical science, we have not made equal gains in prevention.

The creation of a nationwide health-tracking network for the purpose of tracking cancers, birth defects and other chronic diseases, as well as exposure to various environmental toxins, would give all public health officials a sound foundation of data from which to begin their investigations. The health of future generations of Americans depend on the choices we make today about the precedence we give to addressing threats to public health. Today we have more knowledge and tools to improve health—biological, social and environmental—than ever before.
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