Harvey registry will track storm's health toll
Local // Houston
Todd Ackerman
April 25, 2018 Updated: April 26, 2018 11:18 a.m.
Rescue boats work along Tidwell at the east Sam Houston Tollway helping to evacuate people Monday, August 28, 2017. Much of the area is flooded from rains after Hurricane Harvey. ( Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle)Melissa Phillip, Staff / Melissa Phillip
Houston officials have launched a Hurricane Harvey registry, modeled on the one created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, to track the health impact of last year's devastating storm.
The registry, announced by Mayor Sylvester Turner at his post-city council news briefing Wednesday, will collect information about health, housing and environmental exposures from Houston-area residents and others who came to the city after the storm. The responses will help researchers and public health officials identify trends and develop treatment and prevention plans.
"We have counted up the costs of Harvey in many ways — lives lost, homes damaged, money spent on debris pickup," Turner said. "But cost and statistics about the long-term health effects of the storm are harder to come by. This will help researchers predict continuing ailments from the Harvey floods and health problems from future storms."
Officials said the registry, a joint effort of the Houston Health Department, Rice University and the Environmental Defense Fund, is the first such attempt to collect and maintain health information about environmental exposures following a major U.S. flooding event.
Harvey exposed Houstonians to increased air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and indoor mold. Those who waded into floodwaters came in contact with a host of contaminants that researchers still are working to identify.
The registry asks participants their whereabouts during the storm, the sort of exposure they experienced, the status of their housing and any symptoms they felt before, during and, most importantly, after the storm and flooding. Researchers will track the health of those who consent to be contacted in the future.
The idea was the result of phone conversations between project leaders and officials in New York City who developed the World Trade Center Health Registry, the largest in U.S. history to track post-disaster health effects. That registry has published more than 100 studies based on information provided by 71,000 people, from all 50 states, who completed a 30-minute telephone interview between Sept. 2003 and Nov. 2004.
The Hurricane Harvey Registry consists of a 10-minute online survey. Project leaders said the initial goal is 5,000 respondents, but they hope to enroll tens of thousands.
Elena Craft, senior health scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, said such a registry would have been great after Hurricane Katrine to help sort out claims about whether those who stayed in temporary housing got sick because of their heavy concentrations of formaldehyde.
One of the first to take the survey was Deborah January-Bevers, whose Memorial-area home was flooded by the release of water from the Addicks and Barker dams. Two months later, she developed respiratory problems that have not gone away.
"I'm now susceptible to allergens, like dust, I never was before," said January-Bevers, president of Houston Wilderness. "I'm coughing, sneezing, have lots of drainage, runny eyes and a stuffed-up nose that wakes me at night. It's become quite a concern."
January-Bevers, who participated in hopes of learning about her health issues more than out of a sense of duty, said she was happy to find a survey section that asked about her specific symptoms. "It was spot on, how it anticipated my health problems."
Researchers will apply for grants to analyze the data once the registry reaches a critical mass of participation. The city health department will use that analysis to better target programs to the areas identified for problems disproportionately affecting people there.
Loren Raun, Houston's chief environmental officer and a Rice professor, said the hope is to conduct more substantive surveying, such as door-to-door interviews, in such areas. Additional funding must be secured for that, she said.
Mark Farfel, director of the World Trade Center registry, said Wednesday he is "pleased that Houston is developing a Harvey registry — health registries play a critical role tracking health outcomes in people affected by disasters and addressing gaps in care, reduced quality of life, impacts on function."
The World Trade Center registry, still going, has identified post traumatic stress disorder, depression, asthma and gastrointestinal reflux disease as the most common post-9/11 chronic conditions. It also found 11 percent more cancer cases among 9/11 rescue workers than among the general New York state population.
Because researchers want to make comparisons, Hurricane Harvey Registry leaders are asking for people to take the survey even if they were not affected by the storm. They also emphasized that all information stored in the registry will be kept private and accessible only to project officials at Rice.
People 18 and older can enroll in the registry online at harveyregistry.rice.edu and through a portal on the city's website.
"This registry is by Houston and for Houston," said Marie Lynn Miranda, Rice provost and lead investigator for the project. "It's our attempt to make sure people in our home community come out of the hurricane stronger, better and healthier."
Funding for the project came from the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Cullen Trust for Health Care.
todd.ackerman@chron.com
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