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Purpose and
User Guide - Word document
Purpose and User Guide
In 1996, the Washington State Department of
Health (DOH) developed the first edition of The
Health of Washington State as a state health
assessment to provide
- a context for comparisons between
local areas and the state as a whole
and between Washington and the
nation;
- an overview of what we knew about
public health problems in Washington
and what we can do about them;
and
- a source of information for
statewide policy decision-making,
prioritization efforts, program
management, budget development, and
resource allocation.
Assessment is an on-going activity. In 2000,
DOH concluded that the information provided in
the 1996
edition of The Health of Washington State
and the 1998 Addendum needed to be updated. Thus, we
began a planning process culminating in this
revised and updated version of The Health of
Washington State. As in the previous version,
this document provides an overview of health
status and related risk and protective factors,
health-related environmental issues, and
measures related to health services, all of
which are important to improving health in
Washington.
The 2002 edition of The Health of
Washington State might serve as a primary
source document for some topics. For other
topics, it is more useful as a
"gateway" document, providing readers
basic information and directing them to more
detailed information available elsewhere.
This edition covers more than 60 topic areas
divided into 10 sections. In general, we have
included
- topics that affect the health of
many people in Washington;
- topics that affect relatively few
people but might result in severe
health outcomes (such as death and
disability); and
- topics that affect relatively few
people but might affect larger numbers
if not well-controlled (such as
infectious diseases and environmental
pollution).
Because effective actions are essential to
improving health, we focused on topics for which
there are effective public health interventions.
For example, we did not include prostate cancer,
because public health interventions continue to
be ill-defined. We also needed personnel within
the DOH (or at Labor and Industries for the
chapters in the Occupational Health Section) to
write the chapters. Thus, while this edition of
The Health of Washington State highlights many
issues of importance to health in Washington,
there are health-related areas it does not
cover.
Most chapters in The Health of Washington
State identified a major indicator to discuss in
relation to the topic. The indicator was
selected to represent an important aspect of the
topic, but decisions were also based on data
availability. We highlighted data for the major
indicator, but a single indicator rarely tells
the entire story. For this reason, a few
chapters have more than one major indicator and
most chapters contain a section discussing
additional measures of impact and burden.
Most chapters in The Health of Washington
State are in a standardized format that
includes
- a general definition of the topic
and a definition of the major
indicator used in the chapter;
- a summary of the chapter;
- trends over time, including the most
recent data, to describe the magnitude
of the problem in Washington, allow
comparisons to the US as a whole, aid
Local Health Jurisdictions in
comparing themselves to Washington,
clarify whether we are improving, and
identify emerging problems;
- national and state goals for 2000
and 2010;
- the major indicator by county, urban
or rural residence, age and gender,
race, Hispanic ethnicity, income, and
education to assist with identifying
health disparities;
- additional measures of impact and
burden;
- known risk and protective factors
and high risk groups;
- public health interventions
including when to intervene, what
strategies work best, and how
effective they are in reducing illness
and maximizing health, including
documenting current DOH strategies;
and
- sources for additional information
about the topic.
The format described above worked best for
specific diseases, causes of death, injuries,
and events related to pregnancy and birth for
which considerable data are available. This
format was less useful in some other areas,
particularly the sections on environmental
health and health systems. Consequently,
chapters in those sections are more likely to
have a different structure.
The 2002 edition of The Health of Washington
State is an update of the 1996 edition. However,
care must be taken when comparing the two
documents, because conventions for measuring
health indicators have changed. The conventions
used this edition are explained in the Technical
Appendix. That appendix, as well as those
providing detail on the major data sources and
an overview of death and hospitalization rates
for selected diseases and injury, is intended to
help the reader develop a more complete context
for understanding the data presented in the
document.
Data in this document might also differ from
those presented in other DOH publications or in
publications of federal, local, and other state
organizations. While there are guidelines and
commonly used conventions for many definitions
and analytic methods, there are no fixed
standards. Definitions and methods that work
best for one purpose might not be best for
similar data developed for different reasons.
Where relevant, each chapter discusses
differences between definitions and analytic
methods in the chapter and those used elsewhere,
such as in Healthy People 2010. Because of these
differences, care must be taken when comparing
data from this document to data from other
publications.
This document shows what we know generally
about health status, risks to good health, and
health care services in Washington. It also
shows where there are gaps in our monitoring
data; in our knowledge of underlying processes
by which disease, injury, disability, and
premature death affect us; and in our knowledge
of proven approaches for bringing about desired
outcomes.
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