The Tracking Times: New Grantees Hard at Work!

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Environmental Public Health Tracking Newsletter

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New Mini-Grantees Hard at Work

On August 1, our newest cohort of grantees kicked off their projects under our Taking Action with Data mini-grant program. Seven grantees were funded at about $10,000 each to complete small-scale environmental health projects in their communities over the next year. They designed their projects after investigating local data on our data portal or County Environmental Health Profiles

This year's grantees include:

  • Bayfield County — Tickborne Disease Outreach
  • City of Menasha — Lead Safe Menasha
  • Dunn County — Data-Driven Decision Making: Using Private Well Water Data to Develop Local Policy and Partnerships
  • Fond du Lac County — Cultivating Environments to Promote Sun Safety
  • Green Lake County — High Nitrates, H2O No! Well Water Check Ups
  • Monroe County — Establishing Baseline Water Quality in Monroe County
  • Rock County — Improving Tick Surveillance and Tick Disease Public Education

This is the fifth year of the Taking Action with Data mini-grant program. Since 2015, we have invested over $378,000 to fund 38 projects in 30 Wisconsin jurisdictions. To read stories from these projects, visit our Resources page.


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Taking Action with Data

Read the latest success stories from the Tracking world.

Preventing Carbon Monoxide Poisoning in Bayfield County, Wisconsin

Using their County Environmental Health Profile, Bayfield County Health Department staff identified carbon monoxide as a community concern. In their county, they saw about 15 emergency room visits related to carbon monoxide poisoning per 100,000 people, which is nearly double the Wisconsin average of about eight visits per 100,000 people. Bayfield County is the northernmost county in Wisconsin, and nearly nine in 10 households use some form of combustible heat source. Read more...


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In Case You Missed It: 2019 County Environmental Health Profiles are Live!

Our most popular resource, the County Environmental Health Profiles, came out in late May! The profiles include county-level measures for hot topics like radon, Lyme disease, and well water quality. Use these profiles to better understand environmental health in your community and then take action!

Lung Disease and Vaping Investigation

In July 2019, the Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Health—including members of the Tracking team—started investigating a cluster of eight young people with a mysterious, severe lung disease. One common thread among all patients is that they reported recently using e-cigarettes and vaping products. Since then, that investigation has ballooned and now includes hundreds of patients in over 30 states. To stay up to date on the investigation, visit our Outbreaks page

Alcohol Outlet Density Data Available at the City/Village/Town Level

Earlier this summer, we launched our first ever data topic available at the city/village/town level: alcohol outlet density! Alcohol outlet density is a measure of how many liquor licenses are in a given area. Users like you told us how important it is to view this data topic at a sub-county level, and we have been working on it since fall of last year. 

To pull up your data, go to the Tracking portal, select alcohol as a topic, then pick “By City/Village/Town” under the Choose a Geography section. You’ll then pick your county (if your jurisdiction straddles a few, you can pick any of them) and hit OK. 

We also added new alcohol-related hospitalizations data (county-level) and alcohol-related fall deaths, poisoning deaths, and suicide deaths (state level). If you have any questions about these new data, please let us know.