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The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has developed the Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) project in collaboration with the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO), the Public Health Foundation, and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers. The goal of CHSI is to provide important health and health-related data in a way that makes them useful to communities. The project builds upon work in community health profiles being performed by many state and local health departments, federal agencies, and national organizations, by adding data elements and comparisons that are not readily available to the majority of local communities. Data are available online and searchable by several query options at the HRSA web page.
CHSI has produced community-specific reports of health status for counties across the United States. The reports provide action-oriented information useful to local health departments in a new, engaging format. Further, indicators themselves reflect valid and meaningful measures of a broad range of health. Contrasts of communities with like areas across the country are unique to this project.
County level data are presented. In many cases, several years of data are grouped together to provide a stable measure. State, national, or estimated measures are provided when local measures are not readily available.
Data come primarily from Federal agency sources, including the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the National Health Interview Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Health Care Financing Administration, and the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Community Health Reports include indicators in the following areas:
Project website and updated information:
http://www.communityhealth.hrsa.gov
Brent Ewig
Association of State and Territorial Health
Officials
1275 K Street, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20005
Phone:
(202) 371-9090
E-mail: bewig@astho.org
Web page:
www.astho.org
Anjum Hajat, M.P.H.
National Association of County and City Health
Officials
1100 17th Street NW, 2nd
Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036
Phone: (202) 783-5550
E-mail:
info@naccho.org
Web page:
www.naccho.org
Norma Kanarek, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Public Health Foundation
1220 L
Street NW, Suite 350
Washington DC 20005
E-mail:
Nkanarek@phf.org
Web page:
www.phf.org
The CHSI Report is available online at http://www.communityhealth.hrsa.gov. Reports are web-based only; no printed copies are available. Reports include:
A context for demographic and health characteristics of both individual communities and peer communities. Along with each community's indicator level, typical (e.g., median) values from the peer communities may be presented.
Behavioral risks, preventive services use, access, health resources and summary health measures.
Estimates of at-risk target populations and prevalence rates.
Rates age-adjusted to the year 2000 standard.
The National Center for Educational Statistics publishes Youth Indicators to meet the needs of policy makers who must establish a context for viewing trends in the well-being of youth. Youth Indicators is a statistical compilation of data on young people including information about family structure, economic factors, jobs, extracurricular activities, and several dozen other elements. These data present a composite of the youth experience, highlighting connections that might otherwise be missed between experiences during and outside of school hours. Although the data presented are national in scope, many of the indicators can be used or adapted for use at the local level.
Whenever possible, tables with data for the past 50 years provide needed historical context for today's issues. Some indicators cover only more recent years. Because new data reveal changes in some of the trends presented, Youth Indicators is updated regularly to maintain its usefulness.
Each indicator is described with a table, chart, and brief descriptive text. The indicators are grouped in sections that feature particular aspects of youth experience. The tables give current and trend information on a given topic. The charts illuminate the statistical tables, highlighting their most important aspects. Short paragraphs describe critical features of each indicator, showing the types of inference one might reasonably make. A short glossary defines key technical terms.
Information Resource Center (IRC)
Phone: 1-800-USA-LEARN
(1-800-872-5327)
Washington, D.C.
Phone: 202-401-2000
Spanish speakers
are available (se habla español).
Phone: TTY:
1-800-437-0833
E-mail: usa_learn@ed.gov
INet Project Manager
National Library of Education
U.S. Department
of Education/OERI
Suite 4W300
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington,
D.C. 20202
Phone: (202) 205-4873
Fax: (202) 205-7759
E-mail:
webmaster@inet.ed.gov
The Education Publications Center (ED Pubs) is the U.S. Department of Education’s one-stop center for access to its information products including publications, videos, brochures, posters, and other mailings. Use the ED Pubs Online Ordering System (http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html) or call ED Pubs at the toll-free number 1-877-4-ED-PUBS (877-433-7827). Spanish speakers are available (se habla español). TTY: 1-877-576-7734. E-mail: edpubs@inet.ed.gov.
Healthy People is a national initiative to improve the health of all Americans. The most recent edition of these health goals was released in January 2000 as Healthy People 2010. All of the objectives were chosen with extensive contributions from members of the Healthy People Consortium (which includes over 350 national organizations and 250 state public health, mental health, substance abuse, and environmental agencies). In addition, teams of experts inside and outside of the federal government provided the best scientific information available to inform final choices for the objectives. Also influential were the more than 10,000 comments received from the public health community, businesses, private and voluntary organizations, and state and local governments, through public hearings, regional meetings, the Internet, and mail.
Many states and communities have taken the Healthy People objectives and used them to assess their own community health status and guide their planning.
Healthy People 2010 identifies 467 health objectives in 28 priority areas for the coming decade. Specific goals are outlined for each objective where data are available to track progress. Objectives that cannot be tracked with available data sources, called developmental objectives, are put on the national agenda for data collection. For the 2010 initiative, developmental objectives still lacking data sources at the national level by the year 2004 will be dropped.
Data for these objectives are obtained through a number of sources, including the census, the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, the National Vital Statistics System, and a variety of other sources. Ideally, it is the goal of Healthy People to obtain data when they are available in order to track the progress of the national health status.
DATA2010 is the searchable online database containing baseline and tracking data for every objective where available, the target objective for 2010, and separate estimates for select population subgroups. Only national data are included at present, but state estimates are expected to be added in the future. The database is part of the CDC/WONDER system at http://wonder.cdc.gov and is accessible through the Healthy People 2010 website.
Deborah Maiese
Office of Disease Prevention and Health
Promotion
Hubert H. Humphrey Building, Room 738G
200 Independence
Avenue, S.W.
Washington, DC 20201
Fax: (202) 205-9478
Web page:
http://www.health.gov/healthypeople
All publications can be accessed online at http://web.health.gov/healthypeople/Publications/default.htm
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (January 2000). Healthy People 2010 (Conference Edition, in Two Volumes). Washington, DC:DHHS. Available on CD-ROM or online at http://web.health.gov/healthypeople/Document
The U.S. Bureau of the Census is developing the American Community Survey to provide annual demographic, social, economic, and housing profiles for the nation, states, and metropolitan areas. Information for smaller geographical areas (e.g., census tracts, rural areas) and small population groups (e.g., teenage mothers, American Indian reservations, people over 85 years old) will be provided as 3- and 5-year moving averages. Both annual and moving average information will be updated every year, instead of once every 10 years as happens now with the decennial census. The U.S. Bureau of the Census plans on full implementation of this survey in every county in the nation starting in 2003. Data from the survey will be released each year beginning in July, 6 months after the end of the data collection year.
Summary tables, similar to the decennial census sample (SF3) tables, for the communities included in the 1999 survey, are available as detailed tables on American FactFinder on the Census Bureau website. Tabular and narrative profiles extracted from the summary tables are available on the American Community Survey website. A CD-ROM, containing descriptions of survey methodology, tables, and profiles plus public use microdata sample data for 1996-1998 American Community Survey sites, as well as Ivation Beyond 20/20 data presentation software, is available by mail request to the Census Bureau Marketing Services Office or by e-mail to acs@census.gov.
Because the information will be updated every year, American Community Survey data can be used with other data sources for analyses of neighborhood effects. By using American Community Survey profiles in conjunction with information provided from administrative data, analysts can develop more sophisticated performance measures and identify consequences of public policies and local economic conditions. The American Community Survey will eventually be enable the measurement of change over time, even for neighborhoods, small towns, and rural areas.
Marketing Services Office
U.S. Census Bureau, FB3, Room
3015
Washington, DC 20233-0800
Phone: 1-888-456-7215
E-mail:
acs@census.gov
Web pages:
http://factfinder.census.gov
http://www.census.gov/acs/www
Brochures describing the American Community Survey and responding to frequently asked questions are available by mail from the Marketing Services Office. A listing of technical papers and articles of interest to potential users of the survey is available in the Methodology and Documentation, ACS Library, at http://www.census.gov/acs/www.
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