TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Health and Environment this week announced the release of the latest data from the state’s participation in a national survey designed to measure personal health behaviors and the prevalence of chronic diseases.
Data from the 2013 Kansas Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) were posted Monday on the KDHE website.
“This is largest health-risk behavioral survey in the nation,” said Paula Clayton, director of the Bureau of Health Promotion within KDHE. “All 50 states participate. They’ve all used the same methodology since the early 1990s.”
For the BRFSS survey in 2013, KDHE workers conducted telephone interviews with 20,000 randomly selected adults throughout Kansas. The calls were made using both land-line and cell phone numbers.
The chronic disease measures include asthma, cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and obesity. Health behaviors include binge drinking, tobacco use, seat belt use, fruit and vegetable consumption, and exercise.
Developed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the survey is designed to measure broad year-after-year trends in public health, Clayton said.
“We weren’t really blown away by any particular indicator,” she said. “These are population data and the indicators move slowly. But still, they tell us what the ill-health drivers are and where the opportunities for improving health at the population level are as well.”
But one of the “more dramatic” trends, Clayton said, is how residents in some parts of the state have significantly higher rates of diabetes.
“Overall, Kansas’ prevalence of adult diabetes is 9.6 percent,” she said. “But in four regions, it’s over 12 percent.”
Other Kansas-specific findings:
• 65 percent of the state’s adults are overweight or obese.
• 20 percent of adult Kansans said they had smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lives and in 2013 were smoking “some days or every day.”
• Almost 27 percent of the state’s adults said they had not had their cholesterol levels checked in the previous five years.
• Almost 7 percent of adult Kansans said they had been told they had cancer, almost 9 percent said they had asthma, 4.2 percent said they’d had a heart attack and 18.1 percent said they had been diagnosed with depression.
The 10 counties with the highest percentages of adults who said they had engaged in binge drinking within the previous 30 days: Cherokee, 25.1 percent; Riley, 24.4 percent; Douglas, 22 percent; Ellis, 21.9 percent; Pottawatomie, 20.6 percent; Neosho, 20 percent; Jefferson, 18.9 percent; Dickinson, 18.7 percent; Finney, 18.2 percent; and Allen, 17.8 percent.
Prior to 2013, KDHE’s participation in the survey had been limited to about 8,000 interviews. But in 2013, Clayton said, workers were able to conduct 20,000 interviews due in large part to a grant from the Kansas Health Foundation.
The increase, she said, allowed the agency to generate “reliable estimate” data in 42 counties, rather than for four counties in previous years.
“We have a lot more local-level data now,” Clayton said.
Michelle Ponce, executive director of the Kansas Association of Local Health Departments, said many of the state’s county health departments will use the BRFSS data to build their community health assessments, a key step toward becoming accredited by the Public Health Accreditation Board, a national group.
“All across the state, health departments have two main sources of public health data,” Ponce said. “BRFSS is one, the other is Kansas Health Matters.”
Clayton said KDHE hopes to have much of the new BRFSS data available on Kansas Health Matters website by December.
Kansas Health Matters is a data-sharing cooperative. Its members include KDHE, Kansas Association of Local Health Departments, Kansas Hospital Association, Kansas Association for the Medically Underserved, United Way of the Plains, University of Kansas, Kansas Health Foundation and the Kansas Health Institute.
The Kansas Health Foundation is the primary funder of the Kansas Health Institute, which is the parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service.
Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.