World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Children's Health and Environment, Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute and Child Health Research Centre, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Children's Health and Environment, Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute and Child Health Research Centre, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Ann Glob Health. 2016 Jan-Feb;82(1):156-68. doi: 10.1016/j.aogh.2016.01.012.
Adverse environmental exposures in early life increase the risk of chronic disease but do not attract the attention nor receive the public health priority warranted. A safe and healthy environment is essential for children's health and development, yet absent in many countries. A framework that aids in understanding the link between environmental exposures and adverse health outcomes are environmental health indicators-numerical estimates of hazards and outcomes that can be applied at a population level. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a set of children's environmental health indicators (CEHI) for physical injuries, insect-borne disease, diarrheal diseases, perinatal diseases, and respiratory diseases; however, uptake of steps necessary to apply these indicators across the WHO regions has been incomplete. A first indication of such uptake is the management of data required to measure CEHI.
The present study was undertaken to determine whether Australia has accurate up-to-date, publicly available, and readily accessible data on each CEHI for indigenous and nonindigenous Australian children.
Data were not readily accessible for many of the exposure indicators, and much of the available data were not child specific or were only available for Australia's indigenous population. Readily accessible data were available for all but one of the outcome indicators and generally for both indigenous and nonindigenous children. Although Australia regularly collects data on key national indicators of child health, development, and well-being in several domains mostly thought to be of more relevance to Australians and Australian policy makers, these differ substantially from the WHO CEHI.
The present study suggests that the majority of these WHO exposure and outcome indicators are relevant and important for monitoring Australian children's environmental health and establishing public health interventions at a local and national level and collection of appropriate data would inform public health policy in Australia.
儿童早期的不良环境暴露会增加慢性病的风险，但这些问题并没有引起足够的重视，也没有得到应有的公共卫生优先关注。安全和健康的环境是儿童健康和发展的必要条件，但在许多国家却无法实现。环境健康指标是一个有助于理解环境暴露与不良健康结果之间联系的框架，它是可以在人群水平上应用的危害和结果的数值估计。世界卫生组织（WHO）已经为身体损伤、虫媒疾病、腹泻病、围产期疾病和呼吸道疾病制定了一套儿童环境健康指标（CEHI）；然而，在 WHO 各区域应用这些指标所需的步骤的实施情况并不完整。衡量 CEHI 所需的数据管理是实施这些指标的第一步。
本研究旨在确定澳大利亚是否拥有关于土著和非土著澳大利亚儿童的每一项 CEHI 的准确、最新、公开和易于获取的数据。
许多暴露指标的数据难以获取，而且许多可用数据不是针对儿童的，或者仅适用于澳大利亚的土著人口。除了一个结果指标外，其他结果指标的数据都很容易获取，而且通常适用于土著和非土著儿童。尽管澳大利亚经常在几个领域收集关于儿童健康、发育和福祉的关键国家指标的数据，这些领域大多被认为与澳大利亚人和澳大利亚政策制定者更为相关，但这些指标与 WHO 的 CEHI 有很大的不同。
本研究表明，这些 WHO 暴露和结果指标中的大多数对于监测澳大利亚儿童的环境健康以及在地方和国家层面建立公共卫生干预措施是相关和重要的，收集适当的数据将为澳大利亚的公共卫生政策提供信息。
