In many measures of health, Oregon stands out. Our rate of heart attack hospitalizations is 25 percent lower than the U.S. average. Premature births are 35 percent less frequent. And we have one of the lowest rates of asthma hospitalizations in the country.

But statewide numbers obscure that within Oregon, there are regions that stand out because of their poor health outcomes. Emergency hospitalizations for asthma are double the state average in Sherman County. Far to the south in Lake County, newborns are nearly four times more likely to die during their first four weeks than elsewhere across the state. In Coos County on the southern Oregon coast, the rate of heart attack hospitalizations is twice that in Benton County, which has the lowest rate of heart attacks in Oregon.

While the precise causes of these hot spots remain uncertain, public health officials have gained a new tool that may help pinpoint answers: a Web-based database that allows researchers to map health and illness patterns alongside environmental factors, such as exposure to pollution or contaminated water.

Oregon is one of 17 states funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop the Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. Via the free, online database, professional researchers as well as ordinary citizens can track environmental exposures and chronic health conditions.

"By bringing this information together, we want to make it easier for public health professionals, environmental professionals and researchers to start to ask the questions that will lead to ways to improve health and prevent chronic illness," said Curtis Cude, manager of the program for Oregon's division of public health. 

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