As a result, the Pew Commission awarded an A to Texas last year as one of the nation s leaders for tracking birth defects and related conditions. The story of Brownsville, Texas, demonstrates the value of public health research, tracking and response in preventing disease. At a time when scientists have uncovered new links between environmental factors and often fatal diseases, the Pew Commission has determined that our national public health system is woefully inadequate to meet the growing demands of chronic disease. Americans are deeply concerned about these types of issues. In 1997 alone, the public made approximately 1100 requests across the U.S. for investigations of potential cancer clusters.
Environmental factors are always the leading suspect.
The finger pointing will only escalate until we have better public health information and action. States and communities need better accountability and action capacity so environmental health problems can be quickly identified and strategies mobilized to fix and prevent diseases and promote our well-being when possible. And citizens are willing to invest their tax dollars to improve public health systems, which they consider a more important spending priority than building roads, tax cuts, a missile defense system and even fighting crime. But the majority of registered voters surveyed believe that their elected officials are not adequately responding to the threats at hand. Our nation suffers from a shortage of strong national leadership in environmental health.