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Public Health Interventions are surveillances that monitors health events through systematic and ongoing collection, analysis and interpretation of health data for the sole purpose of planning, implementing, evaluating but mostly to promote and or protect health or prevent illnesses in communities or populations (Thacker & Berkelman, 1988).

In order to implement any new environmental public health interventions into operations, firstly, previous interventions must be consulted and reexamined to conclude type, method of application, demographics, location and whether it was successful or not and the reason for it failing or becoming successful. Also, check if there were any improvements done after it was applied and what were they. Therefore, if any data was missed or entered in err in the database it should be corrected before moving forward with a new intervention.

There are two types of surveillances that are used for public health interventions; active surveillance and passive surveillance. Active surveillance is where staff members are hired to regularly contact health care providers or the community in order to gather information about their health conditions. This type of surveillance is very accurate and have timely information however, it would be very expensive due to the number of employees needed to cover the entire community, hospitals, clinics. Passive surveillance is where reports from public health units, hospitals, clinics are sent to a health jurisdiction (Thacker & Berkelman, 1988). This type is cheaper than active surveillance because a lot of employees are not needed to be actively collecting data but one command center to receive all the data needed to implement a particular type of public health intervention.

The types of monitoring methods that can be used in Air Quality and Climate Control would be both active and passive surveillance. For the active monitoring it would be important to visit low-income neighborhoods to interview members directly and ask specific questions about both indoor and outdoor air quality of their living quarters and any health issues acquired due to the circumstances or before they moved in that particular neighborhood. For the passive monitoring collecting data for all emergency visits due to respiratory illnesses from particular neighborhoods or even cancer related emergency visits from those neighborhoods would be helpful in integrating and implementing any environmental health intervention that could help to alleviate future illnesses.

In April 2007, then Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC implemented a sustainability plan (NYC), to combat climate change, prepare for a population growth spurt and enhancing quality of life by reducing the city’s greenhouse emissions by 30% and improving air quality for new Yorkers. This was a collaborative effort between NYC DOHMH and Queens College of the City University of New York to monitor the air quality across the city of New York and identify pollution problems and where any improvements can be made. This type of intervention is called passive surveillance because data was collected and sent to a command center for analysis and proposed intervention. Because of all the findings and data acquired NYC was able to place some regulations on some public health hazards by reducing sulfur content of heating oil and replacing it with a cleaner oil with less sulfur content (Healthy People 2020).

The majority of environmental health interventions that were carried out were mostly done by passive surveillance. This seems to be the most economical way to get the data needed when funding is low in order to implement any kind of public health intervention, especially in the air quality and climate change project for this term. Most of the intervention was done based on data collected from hospital emergency rooms, clinics and monitoring air quality stations set up in low-income neighborhoods. For such a populated city as NYC this is the most logical way to gather data since there wouldn’t be enough man power to visit each borough and interview all the communities that fall into the low-income category.

Reference

New York City Air Quality Programs Reduce Harmful Air Pollutants (2014). http://wwwhealthypeople.gov/2020/healthy-people-in-action/story/new-york-city-quality-programs-reduce-harmful-air-pollutants

Nsubuga, P., White, M.E., Thacker, S.B., Anderson, M.A., Blount, S.B., Broome, C. V., Trostle, M. (2006). Chapter 53: Public health surveillance: A tool for targeting and monitoring interventions. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11770/