Bexar County Community Health Assessment

Community Health Outcomes Assessment

Phase 1 of the community assessment relied on traditional public health information sources such as vital records of births and deaths. The initial phase also included less traditional sources such as hospital discharges and health care providers. This information was used to construct tables for community health outcomes, such as fertility, low birth weight, leading reasons for hospitalization, and leading causes of death.

The health indicator information gathered from the vital records for phase 1 was originally collected on individuals through birth and death certificates and surveys. The emphasis for the assessment is to provide health status information at the community level. Since vital statistics data are collected for all individuals, the number of events is much larger than responses collected from a sample in a survey. For purposes of reporting health outcomes, the individual-level data are aggregated to 21 areas within Bexar County that are based on housing and socio-demographic characteristics. The areas are grouped (with similar colors) into the six large sectors used for health behaviors that radiate from the center of the county.

Health outcomes tables cover the period 1998 to 2004. Coverage ends with 2004 in order to provide a four-year reporting for comparability with the final report for the 2002 Assessment (the ending year for the vital data reporting for the 2002 Assessment was 2000) and in order to be assured of completeness of the 2004 vital data reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services. As a rule, vital data of birth and death records are considered provisional until reviewed by the Department for accuracy. The review is usually not finished until well into the year following the year of reporting interest. The assurance of accuracy and completeness of 2005 data for the purpose of reporting will be later in the year 2006 at the earliest.

However, to obtain at least a preliminary look at community health data for San Antonio for 2005, please see the 2005 Health Profile published by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. The Metropolitan Health District is able to provide these data because they use provisional data collected locally. Marginal differences may be noticed between Health Profile tables and BCCHA tables because the local data have not yet been subjected to the data cleaning and edit checks conducted by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

As with health behaviors the findings for health outcomes for Bexar County are compared with Texas and Harris County. The report card format in the final report that compare levels of geography ranked on dimensions of health will include health outcomes.