Approximately 1.5 million women in the United States are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner (IP) each year (1). The Woman Abuse Tracking in Clinics and Hospitals (WATCH) Project at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health analyzed data from the 1996 and 1997 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in Massachusetts to 1) estimate the percentage of women aged ...

We explored tobacco use across federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and compared data on state-level tobacco use between FQHC patients and the general population. We used data from the Uniform Data System (UDS) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to generate estimates of 2013 prevalence of tobacco use among adults aged 18 years or older. According to UDS data, the o...

OBJECTIVES This study examined and compared utilization of dental services by adult U.S. Hispanics 18 years and older in the years 1999 and 2006. METHODS Dental utilization data collected by telephone interviews by the state-based Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) were analyzed. RESULTS In 2006, the state mean and median prevalence of adult Hispanics with dental visits duri...

A recursive system of ordered self assessed health together with BRFSS data were used to investigate health and obesity in the Appalachian state of West Virginia. Implications of unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity of lifestyle outcomes on health were investigated. Obesity was found to be an endogenous lifestyle outcome associated with impaired health status. Risk of obesity is found to in...

INTRODUCTION The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is commonly used for estimating the prevalence of chronic disease. One limitation of the BRFSS is that valid estimates can only be obtained for states and larger geographic regions. Limited health data are available on the county level and, thus, many have used small-area analysis techniques to estimate the prevalence of diseas...

OBJECTIVES To quantify population-level bias in self-reported weight and height as a function of age, sex, and the mode of self-report, and to estimate unbiased trends in national and state level obesity in the USA. DESIGN Statistical analysis of repeated cross-sectional health examination surveys (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES]) and health surveys (the Behavior...

Populations affected by disaster increase the demand on emergency response and public health systems and on acute care hospitals, often causing disruptions of services. Household preparedness measures, such as having a 3-day supply of food, water, and medication and a written household evacuation plan, can improve a population's ability to cope with service disruption, decreasing the number of ...

The goals of this study were to validate a number of available collective social capital measures at the U.S. state and county levels, and to examine the relative extent to which these social capital measures are associated with population health outcomes. Measures of social capital at the U.S. state level included aggregate indices based on the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey (A...

BACKGROUND The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a network of health-related telephone surveys--conducted by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and participating US territories-that receive technical assistance from CDC. Data users often aggregate BRFSS state samples for national estimates without accounting for state-level sampling, a practice that could introduce bia...

OBJECTIVE (i) To estimate the independent and combined effects of race/ethnicity and region on the variety of fruits and vegetables consumed in the USA in 2011; and (ii) to assess whether and to what extent race/ethnicity and region may synergistically influence variety of fruit and vegetable consumption. DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis. Multivariate logistic regression predicted the likeliho...