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The Partnership for a Healthy Delaware County (PHDC) is working to bring its vision of Delaware County to life – “A welcoming environment where all can thrive and enjoy emotional and physical wellbeing.” To help make this happen, PHDC is currently engaged in a Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnership (MAPP) process. One of the chief components of the MAPP process is the Community Health Status Assessment, which gathers and analyzes data about health status, quality of life, and risk factors from residents in the community.

Completion of the Community Health Status Assessment is accomplished by the deployment of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). The BRFSS utilizes a telephone survey to quantify the health needs and concerns of Delaware County residents. This survey identifies priority issues related to community health and quality of life by answering the following conceptual questions:

·         How healthy are Delaware County residents?

·         What does the health status of the Delaware County community look like?

The survey questions and procedures used for the 2007 Community Health Status Assessment were adapted from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s BRFSS and the Kansas Institute of Health’s Kansas Health-Nutrition Activity survey. Additional questions were determined jointly by the PHDC Assessment Subcommittee and The Strategy Team, Ltd.

Information regarding the survey methods used and the survey questions asked can be found in Appendices 1 and 2. Of the 1,321 telephone interviews conducted, 1,196 of these comprised a sample whose results can be generalized across the county, yielding a sampling error of ±2.8%.

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The data in this report are primarily reported via graphs. Because most of the questions asked were “yes/ no” questions, most graphs show the estimated population percentages of Delaware County residents who report a particular health condition, risk factor, or behavior. Like any estimate produced from population surveys, the population parameter estimates are subject to various kinds of error. When possible, the graphs in this report display not only the estimated population percentages or averages but also “error bars” to indicate the precision of each estimate. These error bars illustrate the 95% confidence interval around each point estimate – the range of values that most likely contains the “true” population parameter 95% of the time.

Graphical use of error bars yields another benefit to the reader – a visual test of statistical significance. Please see the example graph, below. Whenever one estimate’s error bars overlaps with another estimate’s error bars, those two estimates can be considered to be statistically similar. For example:

·         The error bars for those aged 18-24 (14%) overlap with those aged 25-44 (17%). Therefore, the difference in responses between these two groups is not statistically significant.

However, if two or more estimates’ error bars do not overlap, the difference among the estimates is statistically significant.[1] For example:

·         The error bars for those aged 18-24 (14%) do not overlap with those aged 45-64 (44%) or with those aged 65 and over (74%). Therefore, the difference between those aged 18-24 and those aged 45-64 is statistically significant, as is the difference between those aged 18-24 and those aged 65 and over.

·         The error bars for those aged 65 and over do not overlap with any other bars – the responses from those aged 65 and over are statistically different from the responses from all other groups.

For certain risk factors and health issues, comparisons are made to 2002 Delaware County BRFSS data as well as 2006 BRFSS Ohio data, when such data are available.

The next two pages present a demographic overview of those who participated in the survey. Following this, a summary of critical risk factors and health issues provides a “bird’s eye view” of the current health of Delaware County residents. This summary allows readers to consider risk factor and health behavior data both in 2007 and in comparison to historical data (i.e., to the 2002 Delaware County BRFSS and to the 2006 Ohio BRFSS data), which can help track healthy or unhealthy changes over time.

 
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Table 1a: Randomly selected sample of Delaware County households ONLY (n=1,196)

          Note: Information about how the data were weighted can be found on page A-3 of the Appendix.

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Table 1b: Randomly selected sample of Delaware County households as well as additional households in the Big Walnut region (n=1,321)

   Note: “Other” employment status includes students, homemakers, and retired adults.

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This page summarizes the estimated prevalence of various risk factors and critical health issues reported by Delaware County residents in 2007. For each risk factor, the 2007 weighted percentage is compared to 2002 Delaware data and to 2006 Ohio data and are presented as being significantly higher, lower, or similar (i.e., no statistical difference).

Example: The percentage of Delaware County adults reporting their general health status as “fair” or “poor” in 2007 (9%) is statistically similar to the 2002 estimate (8%) and statistically lower than the 2006 Ohio estimate (15%).

Table 2: Data Summary – Risk Factors and Critical Health Issues