Health

Description:

The classification and identification of locations where persons report to be more or less healthy or have more or less social capital, within a specific area such as a health region, is tremendously helpful for understanding place and health associations. The objective of the proposed study is to classify and map areas within the Zone 6 Health Region (Figure 1) of Nova Scotia (Halifax Regional Municipality and Annapolis Valley regions) according to health status (Dimension 1) and social capital (Dimension 2). We abstracted responses to questions about self-reported health status, mental health, and social capital from the master files of the Canadian Community Health Survey (Cycles 1.1, 1.2 and 2.1), National Population Health Survey (Cycle 5), and the General Social Survey (Cycles 13, 14, 17, and 18). Responses were geocoded using the Statistics Canada Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF+) and imported into a geographical information system (GIS) so that the postal code associated with the response will be assigned to a latitude and longitude within the Nova Scotia Zone 6 health region. Kernel density estimators and additional spatial interpolators were used to develop statistically-smoothed surfaces of the distribution of respondent values for each question. The smoothing process eliminates the possibility of revealing individual respondent location and confidential Statistics Canada sampling frame information. Using responses from similar questions across multiple surveys improves the likelihood of detecting heterogeneity among the responses within the health region area, as well as the accuracy of the smoothed map classification.

Description:

Approaches used to select records for tabulation of national injury hospitalization data were identified. Three of the approaches were based on the principal diagnosis in the hospital separation record; the other three required that the record contain a code for an external cause of injury. Differences within these two main groups resulted in identification of six distinct approaches. Each approach was applied to the same set of hospital separation data. The numbers and types of injury records retrieved with the six approaches are compared and implications of the findings for injury surveillance are discussed.

Description:

Traditionally administrative hospital discharge databases have been mainly used for administrative purposes. Recently, health services researchers and population health researchers have been using the databases for a wide variety of studies; in particular health care outcomes. Tools, such as comorbidity indexes, have been developed to facilitate this analysis. Every time the coding system for diagnoses and procedures is revised or a new one is developed, these comorbidity indexes need to be updated. These updates are important in maintaining consistency when trends are examined over time.

Description:

Using survey and contact attempt history data collected with the 2005 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), a multi-purpose health survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we set out to explore the impact of participant concerns/reluctance on data quality, as measured by rates of partially complete interviews and item nonresponse. Overall, results show that respondents from households where some type of concern or reluctance (e.g., "too busy," "not interested") was expressed produced higher rates of partially complete interviews and item nonresponse than respondents from households where concern/reluctance was not expressed. Differences by type of concern were also identified.

Description:

Accurate information about the timing of access to primary mental health care is critically important in order to identify potentially modifiable factors which could facilitate timely and on-going management of care. No "gold standard" measure of mental health care utilization exists, so it useful to know how strengths, gaps, and limitations in different data sources influence study results. This study compares two population-wide measures of primary mental health care utilization data: the Canadian Community Health Survey of Mental Health and Well-being (CCHS, cycle 1.2) and provincial health insurance records in the province of British Columbia. It explores four questions: (1) Is 12-month prevalence of contacts with general practitioners for mental heath issues the same regardless of whether survey data or administrative data are used? (2) What is the level of agreement between the survey data and administrative data for having had any contact with a general practitioner for mental heath issues during the 12 month period before the survey interview? (3) Is the level of agreement constant throughout the 12-month period or does it decline over more distant sub-timeframes within the 12-month period? (4) What kinds of respondent characteristics, including mental disorders, are associated with agreement or lack of agreement? The results of this study will provide useful information about how to use and interpret each measure of health care utilization. In addition, it will contribute to survey design research, and to research which aims to improve the methods for using administrative data for mental health services research.

Description:

National Food and Nutrition Surveys provide critical information to support the understanding the complex relationship between health and diet in the population. Many of these surveys use 24 hour recall methodology which collects at a detailed level all food and beverages consumed over a day. Often it is the longer term intake of foods and nutrients that is of interest and a number of techniques are available that allow estimation of population usual intakes. These techniques require that at least one repeat 24 hour recall be collected from at least a subset of the population in order to estimate the intra individual variability of intakes. Deciding on the number of individuals required to provide a repeat is an important step in the survey design that must recognize that too few repeat individuals compromises the ability to estimate usual intakes, but large numbers of repeats are costly and pose added burden to the respondents. This paper looks at the statistical issues related to the number of repeat individuals, assessing the impact of the number of repeaters on the stability and uncertainty in the estimate of intra individual variability and provides guidance on required number of repeat responders .

Description:

Growth curves are used by health professionals to determine whether the growth of a child or a foetus, for example, is within normal limits. The growth charts currently used in Canada for height, weight and body mass index (BMI) are based on US data. Child growth curves can now be generated from the latest available data in Canada. One way of estimating and drawing growth curves is the Lambda-Mu-Sigma (LMS) method. The method has been used in various studies by the World Health Organization, the United Kingdom and the United States to generate reference growth curves for children. In this article, the LMS method is used to estimate growth curves in BMI percentiles from weighted cross-sectional data provided by cycle 2.2 of the Canadian Community Health Survey. This article is about the child BMI, one of the anthropometric measures most commonly used to assess growth and obesity.

Description:

This study describes the prevalence of chronic pain among seniors living in private households and in long-term health care institutions. Associations between an increase in chronic pain and unhappiness and negative self-perceived health are examined. Data are from the 1994/1995 through 2002/2003 National Population Health Survey and the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey.

Description:

Based on findings from the 2005 Canadian Internet Use Survey, this article examines adults' use of the Internet to access health information. The study also looks at the type of searches conducted by those who sought health information.

Description:

This article uses a geographic-based approach to estimate life expectancy in areas where at least 33% of residents were Inuit. The data are from the Canadian Mortality Database and the Census of Canada.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of youth with disabilities who are not in employment, education, or training (NEET) by province or territory and gender.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of current or recent students with disabilities in terms of requirements for different educational accommodations or modifications (grouped) and if these needs are met or unmet.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of persons with disabilities in terms of those who have the potential to work, or no potential to work (based on an updated definition) by age group and gender.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of employed persons with disabilities in terms of met and unmet needs for required workplace accommodations by age group and gender.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of persons with disabilities in terms of those who use or do not use information and communication technology-related (ICT-related) assistive aids, devices, or technologies by province, age group and gender.

Description: Differences in the number and proportion of persons with disabilities in terms of met and unmet needs for information and communication technology-related (ICT-related) assistive aids, devices, or technologies for persons with disabilities by age group and gender.

Description: Percentage of persons for selected health indicators, by visible minority and selected sociodemographic characteristics (age group, gender or immigrant status) for the population aged 18 and older in the ten provinces. Data is available for Canada (excluding territories). A similar table with a geographical breakdown by region is available in table 13-10-0881.

Description: Percentage of persons for selected health indicators, by visible minority and selected sociodemographic characteristics (age group, gender or immigrant status) for the population aged 18 and older in the ten provinces. Data is available for Canada (excluding territories). A similar table with a geographical breakdown by region is available in table 13-10-0880.

Description: Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by perceived mental health, by gender, for Canada, regions and provinces.

Description: Percentage of persons aged 15 years and over by perceived mental health, by gender and other selected sociodemographic characteristics: age group; immigrant status; visible minority group; Indigenous identity; persons with a disability, difficulty or long-term condition; LGBTQ2+ people; highest certificate, diploma or degree; main activity; and urban and rural areas.

Description: This infographic provides estimates on health care workers' stress, alcohol consumption and positive health behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates are provided across three primary health care worker groups: nurses, physicians, and Personal Support Workers/Care Aides (PSWs/CAs).

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Using data from the 2022 Canadian Social Survey Wave 6 (Well-being and caregiving), this study explores unpaid caregiving in the past 12 months for care-dependent groups (children under 15 years old or adults and youth over 15 years old with a long-term condition or disability). This paper explores: Who are the unpaid caregivers, including "sandwich" caregivers? How much unpaid care is provided and to whom? What are the impacts of this unpaid caregiving on well-being, especially the gendered differences?

Description: This infographic investigates sandwich caregiving in Canada in 2022, defined as providing care in the past 12 months to both children under 15 years old and care-dependent adults and youth over 15 years old with a long-term condition or disability. The infographic explores the prevalence of sandwich caregiving, the types of relationships involved, and the impacts of this type of caregiving.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Growing Up in Québec is a longitudinal population survey that began in the spring of 2021 at the Institut de la statistique du Québec. Among the children targeted by this longitudinal follow-up, some will experience developmental difficulties at some point in their lives. Those same children often have characteristics associated with higher sample attrition (low-income family, parents with a low level of education). This article describes the two main challenges we encountered when trying to ensure sufficient representativeness of these children, in both the overall results and the subpopulation analyses.

Description: Respondents to typical household surveys tend to significantly underreport their potential use of food aid distributed by associations. This underreporting is most likely related to the social stigma felt by people experiencing great financial difficulty. As a result, survey estimates of the number of recipients of that aid are much lower than the direct counts from the associations. Those counts tend to overestimate due to double counting. Through its adapted protocol, the Enquête Aide alimentaire (EAA) collected in late 2021 in France at a sample of sites of food aid distribution associations, controls the biases that affect the other sources and determines to what extent this aid is used.

Description: As the importance of subjective well-being to health continues to garner increasing attention from researchers and policy makers, community belonging has emerged as a potential population health target that has been linked to several self-rated measures of health and well-being in Canada. This study assessed novel area-level community belonging measures derived using small area estimation and examined associations with individual-level measures of community belonging and self-rated health.

Description: Canada is experiencing rapid population aging, which has a wide range of implications, including an increased need for health care services. However, very few studies have examined use of specialized health care services (e.g., visits to medical specialists, non-emergency tests, and surgeries) among older Canadians. Using data from the 2019/2020 Canadian Health Survey on Seniors, this study examines the prevalence of specialized health care service use and evaluates the association of predisposing factors, enabling resources, and need-related factors with specialized health care service use in the past 12 months among Canadians aged 65 or older.

Description: The Quality of Life Framework includes indicators that are meaningful in measuring a person's happiness and well-being like life satisfaction, for instance. Using data from Wave 10 of the Canadian Social Survey (collected from July 14, 2023 to September 07, 2023), this infographic looks at levels of life satisfaction amongst the Canadian population aged 15 years and older in Canada's 10 provinces. Survey respondents were asked: "Using a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means 'Very dissatisfied' and 10 means 'Very satisfied,' how do you feel about your life as a whole right now?"

Description: The data will be used by Health Canada, the Health Promotion Directorate as well as Researchers for alcohol and other drug use in Canada. Information will be used to inform the decision making and program planning efforts of policy makers, practitioners and researchers.

Description: The main purpose of this survey is to collect data to monitor cigarette smoking in Canada and attempt to measure the effect of cigarette price reductions on smoking behaviour.

Description: The results from this survey will be used to develop new programs to educate and inform the public, and to determine the need for new services.

Description: The main objective of the survey is to provide continual and reliable data on tobacco, alcohol and drug use and related issues, with the primary focus on 15 to 24 year olds.

Description: The two primary objectives of the General Social Survey (GSS) are: to gather data on social trends in order to monitor changes in the living conditions and well being of Canadians over time; and to provide information on specific social policy issues of current or emerging interest. The purpose of this survey is to provide a snapshot of the lives of caregivers and care receivers in today's Canada.

Description: The objective of the survey was to provide information on the experiences of respondents in using some selected health care services. The survey focused on two main topics: waiting for specialized services for a new illness or condition and access to basic health care.

Description: The NPHS Health Institutions Component survey data support national level estimates only.

Description: The National Population Health Survey (NPHS) collects information related to the health of the Canadian population and related socio-demographic information.

Description: The purpose of the Canadian Community Health Survey - Mental Health (CCHS - Mental Health) is to collect information about mental health status, access to and perceived need for formal and informal services and supports, functioning and disability, and covariates.

Description: The Maternity Experiences Survey (MES) is the first Canadian survey devoted to pregnancy, labour, birth and postpartum experiences. It is a core project of the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System of the Public Health Agency of Canada who sponsored this survey.