Florida public-health and local resources
A curated list for Audubon Park residents and Florida families — local Orlando, Orange County, state of Florida, and national agencies, plus a handful of independent tools for tracking outbreaks, air quality, and the things that come up at neighborhood scale. Updated as resources change.
§ 01 — Local: Orlando & Orange CountyIf something happens in the neighborhood
For immediate emergencies dial 911. For everything else, these are the local agencies and services Audubon Park residents tend to need. Orange County's communicable-disease reporting flows up into the state and national surveillance systems below — most of what reaches you locally starts here.
- Florida Department of Health in Orange County County-level health department: WIC, immunizations, disease reporting, environmental health permits. Located on West Virginia Drive, ~15 min from Audubon Park.
- Orange County Emergency Management Hurricane preparedness, shelter info during tropical events, OCAlert sign-up for emergency notifications.
- AdventHealth Orlando Level I trauma + tertiary care, ~10 min from Audubon Park via Mills.
- Orlando Health Level I trauma + ORMC, downtown. Closer for southern Audubon Park residents.
- City of Orlando — Urban Forestry Tree-canopy requests, hazard-tree reports, the city's care for the live oaks that define the neighborhood's microclimate.
- Orange County Public Schools District site. Audubon Park K-8 is the neighborhood school; Winter Park and Edgewater are the high-school zone splits.
§ 02 — State of FloridaThe state-level baseline
State-level resources matter for any decision that crosses county lines — hurricane season, prescribed-burn season, summer ozone, red-tide events on either coast. The FDOH publishes weekly respiratory-virus updates statewide; FDACS Florida Forest Service publishes daily prescribed-burn maps.
- Florida Department of Health State-level surveillance, immunization records, special-needs sheltering, food safety. The Respiratory Virus surveillance reports are useful during fall & winter.
- FDACS Florida Forest Service Daily burn maps, wildfire status, the Florida Forest Service's role in the 2 million prescribed-burn acres a year that affect downwind communities.
- Florida DEP — Division of Air Resource Management Air quality permits, monitoring methodology, the state's regulatory air program.
- Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission Bear-encounter reporting, alligator nuisance line, manatee zones, the state's wildlife agency.
- Florida Division of Emergency Management Hurricane season prep, evacuation zones, shelter status. Bookmark before June 1.
- Sunshine State Reader Free iOS reading tracker for the Florida Association for Media in Education's Sunshine State Young Readers Award program. Useful for Audubon Park parents with elementary-age kids.
§ 03 — Tracking: Outbreaks & Air QualityThe two things worth checking together
The two data feeds most worth watching during fall and winter are respiratory-illness surveillance and air quality. Florida's ozone runs hot through summer and fall; viral respiratory illness peaks late fall through early spring. They occasionally overlap — and when they do, the biology compounds. Independent tools that publish the relevant data in readable form:
- Pandemic Watch Current outbreak surveillance for influenza, RSV, COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, aggregated from CDC and state health-department feeds. Florida-state breakdowns and weekly updates.
- Smog Report Real-time AQI from EPA AirNow regulatory monitors. Useful during Florida's summer ozone season, Saharan Air Layer dust events in June and July, and prescribed-burn days. Free iOS app + web.
- Florida air quality guide A Florida-specific explainer covering ozone, Saharan dust, sugar-cane burns, prescribed burns, red-tide aerosols, and hurricane-related CO risk. Worth reading once.
- AQI and outbreaks (explainer) Why air quality and respiratory illness compound each other when they overlap, and how to read the two data feeds together for joint household decisions.
- EPA AirNow The U.S. EPA's canonical air-quality data — the upstream source for Smog Report and every other consumer air-quality app.
§ 04 — NationalWhere the state and county feeds originate
State and county data ultimately flows into the federal surveillance systems below. They're worth bookmarking separately — sometimes a national-level dashboard surfaces a regional pattern faster than the state version does, particularly for new or low-incidence diseases.
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National surveillance, immunization schedules, travel advisories, outbreak alerts.
- CDC Respiratory Virus Data Dashboard Combined readout of flu, RSV, and COVID-19 activity by region, plus wastewater and ED-visit signals.
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Air, water, hazardous-substance, and indoor-air-quality programs.
- Ready.gov FEMA's household preparedness primer — checklists, plans, hurricane-specific guidance.
- National Weather Service — Melbourne / Central Florida The NWS office that issues warnings and forecasts for the Audubon Park area. Useful during severe weather.
§ 05 — About this listWhat we did and didn't include
This page is curated — not exhaustive. The choice criteria: agencies and tools that an Audubon Park resident is likely to actually need, with priority to ones that publish clean, current data and don't require an account. We deliberately left out paid services, signup-walled trackers, and anything that monetizes the user's location.
Independent tools (Pandemic Watch, Smog Report, Sunshine State Reader) appear above alongside government resources because they fill real gaps in the public data — readable Florida-state breakdowns, AirNow on the home screen, the SSYRA program in a format kids can use. They aren't affiliated with AudubonParkFL.com.
Notice an outdated link or a missing local resource? Let us know via the homepage's footer.