Environmental Health Information Management: Selected Developments of Potential Relevance for the European Perspective

Abstract

The science and practice of Environmental Health aims to promote and protect health via environmental pathways. Programmatic documents, e.g. from the European Ministerial Conferences on Environment and Health 1989-99, leave no doubt about the strategic role of information management. This paper outlines Environmental Health reporting and Health Impact Assessment as two complex examples. The role of an adequate structure model (here: WHO’s DPSEEA) as an integrative tool across individual tasks is underlined. As for reporting, the temporal trends concerning groups of regions can usefully support benchmarking; efforts towards standardization are worth-while. In Health Impact Assessment, a major challenge refers to making best use of available information for predicting and assessing exposures and health effects prospectively. Other fields of information management include inquiry systems, visualization, and derivation of quantitative health targets. Generic concepts and specific solutions of Environmental Health information management in a European perspective deserve in-depth exploration.