Baltimore City Health Department to Collaborate with Lead Poisoning Prevention Program on New Data Initiative

BALTIMORE, MD: The Baltimore City Health Department is pleased to announce a new collaboration with the Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at the Maryland Department of the Environment on measuring lead poisoning in Baltimore City.

Current lead reporting in Maryland is based upon prevalence, which is the number of children who have high levels of lead at any point in the year. Starting this spring, city and state officials will cooperate in developing a methodology to measure incidence, which is the number of new lead poisoning cases. The goal is for both prevalence and incidence of childhood lead poisoning to be reported.

By working together, the Health Department and the Lead Poisoning Prevention Program will ensure that the public, legislators, advocates and others receive a consistent picture of the state of lead poisoning in Baltimore City.

Ruth Ann Norton, Executive Director of the National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, headquartered in Baltimore, praised the news. "This accentuates the type of cooperative effort that is critical to our mutual goal of eradicating childhood lead poisoning. By ensuring a single set of data on which we can all rely, the focus can be on targeting programs and dollars to ending lead's toxic legacy."

As a step in this effort, the Health Department is releasing today a new fact sheet on childhood lead poisoning in Baltimore City based on prevalence data from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

"I am pleased that we will be relying on the same data to inform the public," said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, Commissioner of Health. "I am looking forward to developing new ways to measure Baltimore's progress against this terrible condition."

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