CDC Healthcare Survey for Baxter County, Ark.

Survey

What Is Hometown Health Improvement?
Hometown Health Improvement is a grassroots initiative that stresses cooperation, coalition building, community health assessment, prioritization of health issues and the development and implementation of strategies designed and sustained locally. As part of this initiative, Baxter County conducted the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. Baxter County is the first of Arkansas' 75 counties to conduct its own countywide survey.

What Is the BRFSS?
In the early 1980s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked with the states to develop the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This state-based survey, the first of its kind, collected, analyzed and published information on the prevalence of risk behaviors among Americans and their perceptions of a variety of health issues.

Now conducted in all 50 states, the BRFSS continues to be the primary source of information on major health risk behaviors among Americans. State and local health departments rely heavily on BRFSS data to:

Determine priority health issues and identify populations at highest risk.
Develop strategic plans and target prevention programs.
Monitor the effectiveness of intervention strategies and progress toward prevention goals.
Educate the public, the health community, and policymakers about disease prevention.
Support community policies that promote health and prevent disease.

BRFSS information is also used by researchers, voluntary and professional organizations, and managed care organizations to target prevention efforts. Recognizing the value of such a system in addressing priority health issues in the coming century, China, Canada, and other countries have looked to CDC for assistance in establishing BRFSS-like systems for their own populations.

BRFSS data can be analyzed by a variety of demographic variables, including age, education, income, and racial and ethnic background. The ability to determine populations at highest risk is essential in effectively targeting scarce prevention resources.

Why Did Baxter County Conduct the BRFSS?
As the demand for data at a local level has increased, state, county, and local health agencies have begun using the BRFSS to develop county and local information about health risk behaviors. The Baxter County BRFSS was conducted to gather health information on a variety of behaviors that can impact health in both good and bad ways, including smoking, exercise, diet, access to medical care, dental health, quality of life, chronic diseases, cancer screening, and other health related issues.

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Baxter County has a unique population. Senior adults--those 65 and older--account for 27 percent of the population. That's about twice the statewide figure of 14 percent, so Baxter County's health needs may not mirror the needs of the rest of the state or nation.

How Did Baxter County Conduct the BRFSS?
During June and July of 2000, 847 randomly selected adults answered the Baxter County BRFSS telephone survey. Interviews were conducted and supervised by trained telephone research interviewers at the University or Arkansas at Little Rock's Institute of Government. Because of the sizable older adult population, the sample was stratified so that enough interviews were conducted with those age 65 and older to provide reliable estimates of senior health risks. The data were then weighted to be representative of the sex and age distribution of Baxter County. All percentages presented in this report are rounded to the nearest whole percent.

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Who Participated in the Baxter County BRFSS?
Of the 847 people who were interviewed, 348 were men and 499 were women, 456 were age 65 or older, and 827 were white. The following chart summarizes the demographics of the survey participants as both raw numbers and as weighted data. All other data presented in the report is based on the weighted data.

For More Information about the Baxter County BRFSS:

Interested parties may request additional information. Researchers and professionals wanting to build upon Baxter County's 2000 BRFSS data may request additional data from:

Baxter County Hometown Health Improvement
Ellen Kilgore, Project Director
Baxter County Health Unit
PO Box 308
Mountain Home, AR 72654
(870) 425-3072
ekilgore@healthyarkansas.com

For more information about the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System or analysis of the survey data, please contact:

Arkansas Center for Health Statistics
Tara Clark-Hendrix, Lead Programmer Analyst
4815 W. Markham Street, Slot 19
Little Rock, AR 72205
(501) 661-2194
tlclark@healthyarkansas.com

Survey Table of Contents:

Risk Factors
Women's Health & Risk Factors
Baxter County, Arkansas, and United States BRFSS Data Compared
- How Does Baxter County Compare?
Appendix (raw data)