The Community Research Collaborative Blog

Becoming Hawaii: What would Ohio have to do to be #1 in Health Value?

By: Jennifer Chubinski

Readers interested in health should check out the Health Policy Institute of Ohio’s health value dashboard available here.

The institute has gone to great lengths to create a dashboard of health value. This well-conceived and well-researched set of metrics helps provide a North Star to everyone working to improve the health of Ohioans. A great number of diverse and engaged stakeholders from across the state came together to design this dashboard. We could argue over the metrics. Are they the right ones? Do they capture what we want to improve in health value? As someone who wakes up every morning thinking about health data, I can state confidently that they are a strong collection of health measurements that meet the guidelines the advisory group established (see page 17 of the dashboard), most notably that the data are of high quality, consistently available and easy for the general public to understand. 

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Data! Fostering Health Innovation in Kentucky and Ohio

What should our region’s hospitals be doing to improve community health? Here’s your chance to share your opinion.

By: Jennifer Chubinski

The public health departments and healthcare systems in our region are collecting data and community feedback about what needs to be done to improve our region’s health. Not only are they charged with providing top-notch care for people who visit their facilities, but because of new IRS regulations, each nonprofit healthcare system now must identify the community’s health needs, make a plan to improve the health of the general population, and share those plans with the public (attaching their report to their 990 tax form). Feedback from the general public is a critical and required part of each of these plans.

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County Health Rankings a great resource, but be sure to read the fine print

By: Jennifer Chubinski, in collaboration with Susan Sprigg, a public health consultant to Interact for Health

What are the County Health Rankings?

The County Health Rankings are part of an annual report that ranks the health of each county in the country. Every year the release of the rankings creates a tremendous amount of media interest about which counties are doing better or worse. When I am out in the community, I hear about a lot of groups using the rankings to measure progress on their work. While I am thrilled at the use of high quality data, I often have to caution community groups about tracking their progress based on changes in their year-to-year ranking. Please continue reading to understand why.

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Access to Healthcare

By: Jennifer Chubinski

In my last blog, I wrote about what we call, “up-stream factors” in health.  Those are health behaviors that could help you live a longer and healthier life.  Those behaviors were: not smoking, eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and limiting alcohol consumption.  While these behaviors are helpful in keeping you healthy, it is also important to have access to regular healthcare for regular check-ups or when you are sick.  So what does healthcare access look like for adults in Greater Cincinnati (results based on the 2013 Greater Cincinnati Health Status Survey)?

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Do you want to live longer?

By: Jennifer Chubinski

According to a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, four health behaviors contribute to a longer life. Those health behaviors are: not smoking, eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and limiting alcohol consumption. 

As a region how are we doing on these health behaviors? 

Results from the recent 2013 Greater Cincinnati Community Health Status Survey (CHSS) show that we are making progress, but still have a long way to go. 

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Cincinnati 18 out of 50: What would it take to make Cincinnati #1?

By: Jennifer Chubinski    

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) ranks Cincinnati 18th out of the 50 largest Metropolitan Areas (MSAs) on its American Fitness Index (AFI).  The AFI is designed to provide benchmarks for a healthy population and to help communities identify ways to expand community infrastructure to support active, healthy lifestyles.  The 2014 American Fitness Index Report can be found here.

 A quick look at the rankings below shows the top and bottom ranked MSAs along with those close to our ranking. 

 Cincinnati 18 out of 50 on 2014 American Fitness Index

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What difference does 20 years make?

By: Jennifer Chubinski

Life expectancy is 20 years shorter for people living in some of our city’s neighborhoods.  In the photo below, Dr. Camille Jones (light suit seated at the table), assistant health commissioner at the Cincinnati Health Department, discusses the Health Department’s life expectancy data during a panel at a recent Urban Land Institute event about building healthy places.

A stunned silence filled the room when the graph in the picture was shown.

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Children’s Health Data Available in Our Regional Data Portal

By: Jennifer Chubinski

As we leave flu season behind, it’s a good time to talk about how healthy our children are. As a mother I feel very fortunate to say that all of my children are in good health, as are the large majority of children in general. This is true for children in our region as well: most parents (84%) consistently report that their child’s health is “excellent” or “very good.”  And this percentage is much higher than the percentage of adults in our region who report their own health as “excellent” or “very good” (50%), which I discussed in one of my previous blogs.

This month I’ve decided to focus on data available through our regional data portal Facts Matter.  Since you are reading a blog from CRC, Facts Matter’s parent organization, you have probably perused the data portal, but if you haven’t I encourage you to play with all of its award-winning features here.  A number of health-focused datasets are available on Facts Matter, but for this month’s blog I decided to focus on the 2011 Greater Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky Child Well Being Survey (CWBS).

The 2011 CWBS interviewed 2,083 primary caregivers (generally parents) of children younger than 18 in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region.  Primary caregivers were asked more than 70 questions about a randomly selected child in their household. Topics ranged from access to care and chronic conditions to food security and neighborhood social structure.  We are very fortunate to have such a rich source of health data for children in our region. Most regions must rely on national datasets.  You can access all of the data analyses here and the raw data here.

 

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An epidemic many of us don’t see

By: Jennifer Chubinski, in collaboration with Judith Harmony, Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

“Imagine if scientists discovered a toxic substance that increased the risks of cancer, diabetes and heart, lung and liver disease for millions of people.  Something that also increased one’s risk for smoking, drug abuse, suicide, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, domestic violence and depression – and simultaneously reduced the chances of succeeding in school, performing well on a job and maintaining stable relationships? It would be comparable to hazards like lead paint, tobacco smoke and mercury. We would do everything in our power to contain it and keep it away from children. Right?”

This is one of the best article introductions I have read.  It appeared in The New York Times in a story by David Bornstein about protecting children from toxic stress.  His point was that researchers have understood for a long time that toxic stress is associated with an alarming collection of lifelong health and socio-emotional problems for kids, including everything listed above.

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