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What is a Community Health Profile?

What is a community health profile? We provide some solid answers here with regard to this question and the general subject of health profiles for communities. We start things off with the basic definition of community health profiles, or CHP’s as well as their general purpose.

CHP Defined

A CHP is a sort of assessment and data summary regarding the overall status of the health within a given community. There are many factors included in this health status report including healthcare access, healthcare quality, social influences, environmental stressors, and any other factors that affect human health there. With all of this information gathered and combined, a comprehensive report can then be generated and published – the community health profile.

Sources

The sources of CHP’s can be varied. Many private and public organizations concerned with health may create their own CHP’s. Profit-based companies dealing in medical supplies or treatments may also be suspect to the creation of CHP’s for their own profit motivations and other business interests. There is however one government body that is responsible for the regular creation of reliable CHP’s as well as their ready availability to the public.

This ultimate source of community health profiles and associated data is the CDC, or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the CDC website, anyone can quickly and easily find the most up-to-date CHP reports available. This is all administered via the CDC’s CHSI Web Application. Here, data is organized by county and state, representing every county and subsequent community within the United States.

Example CHP’s

General explanations can certainly aid in understanding the concept of the CHP. Perhaps the next best way to further illustrate this raw data offering on community health is through taking a look at a few, specific examples of CHP’s. Let’s take a look at two, opposing CHP reports for two completely different areas represented within the CDC’s CHSI Web Application.

Isle of Wight County, Virginia

The CHP report for this southeastern region of Virginia provides favorable, low mortality rates due to automobile accidents and lower respiratory disease rates. It also experiences favorable rates in adult smokers’ numbers as well as binge-drinking behaviors in adults. On the other hand, this community experiences terrible rates in diabetes deaths, stroke deaths, and syphilis infections. It experiences moderate rates of cancer deaths, HIV infections, and cost barriers to care.

Eagle County, Colorado

Eagle County, nestled deep within central Colorado territory, has its own telling CHP report that differs quite drastically from that of Isle of Wight County. Here, the most favorable community health aspects include low cancer death rates, high life expectancies, and very few syphilis cases. In the moderate area of community health concerns here are violent crime rates, unemployment rates, and automobile deaths. The more serious afflictions suffered by the community however are listed as HIV infections, teen birth rates, and high housing costs among others.

By simply taking a look at these two, opposing CHP reports, one can really begin to understand the nature of the reports and the data contained within.

CHP’s are an important way to gauge community health and the factors impacting it. This valuable information is available to anyone seeking it, not just select agencies or privileged business entities. You can investigate the community health profile and associated data for your community or any others of interest here.