The Cleveland Department of Health, along with Case Western Reserve University and other local institutions, recently started the first health survey of Cleveland residents since 2014 to better understand health behaviors and issues in neighborhoods.
Gathering the data is necessary to improve Cleveland residents' health and welfare, said Dr. Stephanie Pike Moore, a research scientist at the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods at CWRU.
"Nothing has been captured since 2014," she said. "So we don't really have a good sense of any local trends or data since that time. In some cases, we're still feeling the pandemic and the consequences of things that occurred during the pandemic. But there's not enough data to show us what's actually going on in the city right now."
The survey distribution began the week before Thanksgiving and will end December 31, Pike Moore said. She said the goal is to obtain 1,300 responses to the survey, which is modeled after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the nation's largest ongoing health survey. To date, 667 people have filled out the survey, she said.
The survey is open to a randomly selected group of residents from each neighborhood. It's available in both English and Spanish and can be completed online or over the phone. Participants who complete the survey can enter a weekly raffle with financial prizes.
The results of the survey will allow health officials to set priorities for the city and implement policies to improve public health, said Dr. David Margolius, director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health.
"We rely heavily on that data to determine what the priorities are and where we are at," he said. "You can't improve what you're not measuring. And so it's really important to measure health behaviors, health outcomes of all things, health in the city of Cleveland. It's a big deal for us."
Margolius, who has been working to reduce tobacco use in the city, said that issue is a priority of his.
"Obviously smoking is a really important one," he said. "How often in the last 30 days have you smoked a cigarette? That is important given all the work and all the focus that we've been doing on smoking in particular."
There are a number of other issues that researchers are watching for, Pike Moore said, including whether people are getting routine care and cancer screenings.
"But it also could include things like social determinants of health related to things like food insecurity, housing insecurity, transportation insecurity," Pike Moore said. "We also want to look at the things that are challenging to address, like mental health, safety and violence, racial and ethnic discrimination."
But residents' overall quality of life is the most important issue, Margolius said, including how people people rate their own health and how they feel about the future.
Once data collection ends, the researchers will assess the data to determine if the samples are representative of the community, including whether they reached their target goals for each community in Cleveland, Pike Moore said. The results are expected to be shared in February, she said.
Then, the department will work to implement policy based upon the findings, Margolius said.
"These reports are not meant to sit on a shelf and collect dust," he said. "They are meant to drive change."
