Birth Defects: A Communication Toolkit

CDC has developed a new Birth Defects Toolkit It includes a variety of communication pieces including key messages and talking points, a fact sheet, a matte article, and some sample social media posts. Check out our CDC.gov Feature, Birth Defects and the Environment to see how we used the matte article and visit our Facebook page or follow us on Twitterto see the social media pieces in action.

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Health Behaviors: Smoking Prevalence

A new Health Behaviors module is now available. When examining chronic diseases and their potential connection to the environment, it is important to consider other health risk factors that could play a role in their development. Four personal behaviors that can impact chronic diseases are:

• lack of physical activity
• poor nutrition
• tobacco use, and
• excessive alcohol consumption

The Tracking Network currently provides health behavior data on the number and percentage of adults who smoke. CDC plans to add data on other health behaviors to the Tracking Network soon.

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Community Design: Access to Parks

Data on Access to Parks is also new to the Community Design module of the Tracking Network. Parks are an important part of a community. This data will provide a better picture of the access people have to places where they can participate in physical activity. These data can be used to understand how improving access to healthy community places, such as parks, may increase physical activity among community members.

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Climate Change: Extreme Heat Days and Events

CDC has added data on extreme heat days and events to the Tracking Network's Climate Change module. These data will allow you to look at temperature, heat index, and number of days to define extremely hot days and extreme heat events.

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Children's Environmental Health

A Children's Environmental Health module is now available on the Tracking Network! This module brings together data and information already on the Tracking Network related to children's health. Specific topics in this module include asthma, some childhood cancers, lead poisoning, some developmental disabilities, and socioeconomic conditions

In this module you can learn

• reasons why children are at greater risk for health effects from environmental contaminants,
• how exposures to environmental hazards can affect a child's growth and development, and
• ways to protect children from environmental exposures so they can live safer, healthier lives.

Another new feature in each content area is a link to topic-specific communication tools. Example tools include toolkits, videos, and podcasts related to each topic. In addition, some areas now have animated maps available on their communication tools pages.

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