Why a community health report?
Community health profiles offer data to inform policy and program
development and improvement. This, the second annual community
health report, analyzes results for selected health indicators
in our County, compares them with important benchmarks, identifies
critical health issues requiring community attention, and recommends
action to improve our County's community health.
How was the analysis done?
Our county's results for a national standard set of selected health
indicators were estimated. These were then compared with two benchmarks,
the national Healthy People 2000 Objectives, and the California
statewide results. The selected indicators fit within the larger
groups of births, infant deaths, general deaths, and reportable
diseases.
What are important results?
The 1999 results are very similar to last year's results. Births
to teens compared favorably last year and are even slightly better
this year. Low birth weight births dropped this year, but there
is still work to be done to reach the Healthy People 2000 Objective.
Deaths from breast cancer, homicide, suicide and firearms also
compared favorably as did the immunization status of entering
kindergartners. Once again, gonorrhea compares very favorably,
but this shows the need for further testing and reporting rather
than the absence of the infection.
Those areas that compare unfavorably to the benchmarks are Black
infant deaths, deaths from injuries, drug related causes and cardiovascular
disease and chlamydia infections. Last year the three critical
health issues that were identified were injuries, cardiovascular
disease and chlamydia infections. As this report shows, these
issues are still very important to our community's health.
What are we doing to improve our community health?
Last year's report indicated three critical preventable public
health issues: cardiovascular disease, injuries, and chlamydia
(sexually transmitted) infections. We are taking steps in the
implementation of a community health improvement process to address
these issues. Our plan is to establish community coalitions for
the development and implementation of improvement strategies.
HSA took the lead in mobilizing the community and established
the Stanislaus County CVD Prevention Coalition, a countywide coalition
of interested parties. With the establishment of a formal organizational
structure, the Coalition is currently developing a three year
workplan to achieve its mission of reducing CVD risk factors and
improving the quality of life for County residents. The Agency
is working with the State to obtain more definitive data on specific
injuries before forming a task force to address injury prevention.
At the same time, we are collaborating with law enforcement and
child care providers on car seat safety for children. As for chlamydia,
we have applied and received funding from the State, and will
begin to start a county collaborative to address the problem.
This year marks the second year of our community health report.
As stated in last year's plan, we will continue to repeat and
improve our analysis of community health annually. At the same
time, we will look at building community involvement and monitoring
the outcomes of the improvement process. |
