Update History
December 2021
The following updates have been made to the EPHT portal:
Content update:
- New Lead in Soil fact sheet
- New Choose Safe Places resource to help early education and childcare programs with screening proposed locations for environmental hazards
- New Environmental Justice Tool
- New Radon and Lung Cancer data story
- New widget on the Climate Change page showing projected temperature and precipitation data
Data Update:
- Direct Cancer Rates to 2016 and Standard Incidence Ratios to 2015
- Hospitalization Data (Asthma, Carbon Monoxide Poisoning, COPD, Heart Attack, and Heat Stress) to 2017
- Childhood Blood Lead data to 2019
December 2020
The following updates have been made to the EPHT portal:
- New MassTrack newsletter on our climate-enhanced Community Profiles
- New Lead in Soil fact sheet
- New program information on Choose Safe Places, a resource for early education and childcare programs that puts them in touch with state environmental health professionals, during the siting process, to screen proposed locations for environmental hazards
- Explore the Data and Mapping Layer Update for Direct Cancer Rates to 2016 and Standard Incidence Ratios to 2015
May 2020
The following updates have been made to the EPHT portal:
- New MassTrack newsletter focusing on childhood lead poisoning.
- New interactive tools:
- The Emergency Preparedness Population Planning Tool developed to help planners assess the varied access and functional needs of our residents.
- Climate-enhanced Community Profiles providing community-level health and environmental information.
- New fact sheets and guidance documents:
- Radon fact sheets to help residents, school staff, and healthcare professionals learn more about radon:
- Radon in the Home
- Testing Your Home for Radon
- Fixing Radon in Your Home
- Radon in Schools and Child Care Programs
- Radon: Information for Healthcare Providers
- The Healthy Home Guide - a resource for homeowners, homebuyers, and renters to understand exposures in and around their home.
- New articles written by MA EPHT staff for the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics quarterly newsletter:
- Explore Data and Mapping Layer Updates
- Reproductive Outcomes data updated to 2015 and all years revised to reflect clinical/obstetrics gestation age used for calculating gestational age in Massachusetts
- Outdoor Air Monitoring Data updated to 2017
- Rainfall and Temperature projections at the city/town level for 2030-2070 now available in our climate-enhanced Community Profiles
- Birth Defects data updated to 2015
- Recreational Fresh and Marine Beach Water Quality new dataset with data from 2002 - 2018
- Hospitalization and Emergency Department Visits data for Asthma, Heat Stress, COPD, CO poisoning, and Heart Attack updated to 2016
- Climate Change Vulnerability mapping layers updated to 2016
April 26, 2019
The following updates have been made to the EPHT portal:
- EPHT has posted new content and data for Reproductive Health Outcomes. You can now look up data for city/town and census tract!
- The newest issue of our MA EPHT Newsletter, MassTrack is now available!
- Metadata is important! Learn more on our enhanced "About Our Data" page.
- Check out our new Map Glossary to see a list of available geographic layers that you can add to the map when you run a data query.
August 13, 2018
Learn about protecting yourself from Skin Cancer this summer in the latest issue of the MA EPHT newsletter, MassTrack Summer 2018.
New and improved printable tutorials are now available to assist in using the MA EPHT website, accessing data, generating maps, and more! Check them out in the "How to Use Tracking" page in the "About" menu.
We now have an Indoor Air Quality web page with information about common indoor air quality issues and solutions, located in the Environment Section of the website.
Many of our pages now have easy-access, interactive data widgets that quickly show rates of disease over time for specific geographies . All of our usual data can still be queried in more detail by clicking the green and white “Explore maps and tables” buttons on each content page. Check out widgets for: Childhood Lead Poisoning, Pediatric Asthma, Pediatric Diabetes, Asthma, Carbon Monoxide, COPD, Heart Attack, Heat Stress, and Outdoor Air Quality.
We just completed a major data update, spanning multiple topics! See the table below for details!
Dataset |
Updated to |
Asthma (hosp, ED) |
2014 |
Birth Defects |
2014 |
Cancer - Direct Rates |
2015 |
Cancer - Standardized Incidence Ratios |
2013 |
Carbon monoxide (hosp, ED) |
2014 |
Childhood Blood Lead |
2017 |
COPD (hosp, ED) |
2014 |
Heat stress (hosp, ED) |
2014 |
Myocardial infarction (hosp) |
2014 |
Pediatric Asthma |
2016 |
Pediatric Diabetes |
2016 |
May 31, 2018
Spring Newsletter: The Spring Issue of our Newsletter, MassTrack, is now available! Click here to view it and to get information about subscribing.
COPD Information: Peruse the new COPD content page for information on COPD and about upcoming COPD data.
Share Buttons: Use our new share buttons to send useful information to coworkers, friends, family, and followers, available at the bottom right of each web page.
January 23, 2018
The Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking website now includes a page on exposures.
November 20, 2017
The Massachusetts Environmental Public Health Tracking website has been updated with a new theme the is better organized and now responsive for viewing on mobile devices.
February 25, 2017
Check out our new Childhood Lead Screening Community Progress Report! View community-specific indicators of childhood lead screening and exposure, as well as information and resources to help keep children safe from lead exposure.
February 20 , 2017
Since our portal release in July of 2014, the EPHT team has been constantly working to improve performance and enhance EPHT's system capabilities to best fit the needs of local health stakeholders. This webinar, titled “Local Health Tracking – Exploring the Environmental Public Health Tracking Portal to support local health” and presented on January 26th of 2017, introduces the Environmental Public Health Tracking website with a focus on how it can be used to gather and share information to support a variety of community-based projects. This is a great way to learn how to use EPHT for either your own personal interest, community work or other public health purposes.
December 8, 2016
New Data Available! You can now look at 2015 for Childhood Blood Lead data, and 2014 for Outdoor Air Quality data
October 8, 2016
New Content Posted! Check out our Health Impact Assessment web page, under Planning & Tools tab in the main menu and the Recreational Beaches web page, under the Environment tab in the main menu
October 1, 2016
We've Upgraded! You might notice a new look and feel to our data queries and reports - we've recently upgraded the software that runs our system that enhances performance.
May 26, 2016
A new Lead in Drinking Water FAQ is now available! This fact sheet answers frequently asked questions about lead and health, how lead gets into your drinking water, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family from lead exposure.
March 31, 2016
Community Profile reports are live! See selected health, environmental and demographic data for any community in Massachusetts, all in one report.
March 29, 2016
Check out the first series of our updated EPHT tutorials.
February 17, 2016
New and Improved Pediatric Asthma report by School is now available. Click the "Maps & Tables" button next to the Pediatric Asthma landing page to explore the data!
January 17, 2016
Check out our Radon Fact Sheet! This two page pdf provides a printable fact sheet of radon information.
December 7, 2015
See the new additions to our Cancer content area!
- Risk Factor Summaries are now available for 10 different cancer types
- SIR data for 2006-2010 is now available
- SIR data for 2007-2011 is available on December 7, 2015
- Direct Incidence Rates for 2008-2012 data is now available
July 14, 2015
New content area! Visit our Radon page for information about radon in Massachusetts.
June 29, 2015
MDPH-BCEH has released an updated version of the MEPHT Portal. In addition to the updated climate change content, referenced in the June 23, 2015 update, we have provided an updated tabbed layout on several of the content pages and updated our feedback survey. Please take a moment to give us some feedback and complete the short survey before you leave the MEPHT Portal.
June 23, 2015
Check out our updated Climate Change page. We have added a lot of new content including:
- Profiles
- Conceptual Pathways
- Vulnerable Populations
- Maps
June 5, 2015
MA EPHT has uploaded 2 new years of hospitalization and emergency department data. Data for 2011 and 2012 is now available for asthma, carbon monoxide, heat stress and myocardial Infarction (heart attack).