[HealthyTribes] HPCDP County-level data tables newly released

[Moseley Katarina]

Dear colleagues:

Every other year for the past eight, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention (HPCDP) has pulled together a dataset based on the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey from which estimates for all counties can be calculated. The most recent version includes data from 2008 through 2011. These data were released last week on HPCDP's website http://public.health.oregon.gov/DiseasesConditions/ChronicDisease/Pages/pubs.aspx#data.

For your convenience, these tables are designed to be self-contained. What does that mean? Please read the fine print below. We hope you are able to use these tables in your work to advance efforts to improve health in your communities. If you have any questions or comments, please direct them to your TPEP or Healthy Communities liaison.

Sincerely,

Stacey Schubert, MPH
[X]
Senior Research Analyst/Surveillance Lead | Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention | Public Health Division | Oregon Health Authority | 800 NE Oregon St, Suite 730 | Portland, OR 97232 | Phone: 971/673-1099 | Mobile: 971/255-6731 | web: www.oshd.org/hpcdp<http://www.oshd.org/hpcdp>

Every day 19 Oregonians die from a tobacco-related disease

[X]
THE FINE PRINT

*         You can and should compare numbers found in these tables to other numbers found in these tables, but not to any other numbers! Here are some examples:
*         DO compare your county's asthma prevalence to the state's asthma prevalence
*         DO rank order the state's chronic conditions prevalence from high to low (high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, arthritis, etc.)
*         DON'T compare your county's asthma prevalence to the Oregon's 2011 asthma prevalence
*         DON'T compare 2008-2011 county data to 2006-2009 county data

*         You can determine from symbols in the table whether your county's prevalence is statistically higher than, lower than, or no different than, all other counties combined. Here are some example:
*         Douglas County has a higher prevalence of arthritis than all other counties combined
*         Malheur and Multnomah Counties each have lower prevalences of arthritis than all other counties combined
*         The remaining counties each have a prevalence of arthritis that is no different than all other counties combined

*         There are two figures shown for almost all measures for every county. These are "unadjusted" and "age-adjusted" numbers. What follows is a description of when to use one versus the other.
*         Use unadjusted numbers when portraying the degree to which a disease or behavior exists in a county:
*         "6.6% of Josephine County adults reported having had a heart attack." (A powerful next step is to multiply this percentage by the number of adults in your county to convert to people).
*         Use age-adjusted numbers when comparing among counties or to the state:
*         "4.9% of Josephine County adults reported having had a heart attack, compared with 4.4% in Curry, 4.7% in Douglas, and 3.1% in Jackson, counties with which it shares a border (estimates are age-adjusted)."

*         For some measures, data are not shown for some counties. This happens when statistical testing has determined that the calculated number is not reliable enough to report. For some measures, data are depicted, but with a warning. In this case statistical testing has determined that the calculated number is not reliable enough to report without warning.

*         Additional physical activity and nutrition measures will be added to Table II in the future. A release date has not been determined.

*         A special note to those who are familiar with the BRFSS and changes to it in the past few years:  these data represent landline phones only and use "classic weighting." This is the LAST county combined dataset for which this will be true. If you don't know what this means, don't worry about it unless you really want to expand your knowledge base.



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