NCHS Home | Products Home | Conference Materials Data Warehouse | Electronic Announcements | Electronic Products Journal Articles | Reports | Working Papers | Ordering Information Training Opportunities/Materials | CDC/NCHS Privacy Policy Notice Accessibility | Search NCHS | Contact us

Public Health Data: Our Silent Partner

This course, based on a video tape and workbook, was developed to improve the ability of public health professionals to understand and use data in their jobs. The video tape portrays three situational case studies that call for the use of public health data.

Module 1--Leading Causes of Death illustrates how a State health department responded to the Board of Health's concerns about teen violence by using information available from death certificates. This module utilizes counts of deaths by cause to identify leading causes of death for teens and uses rates to compare the risk of death between males and females and changes in risk over time.

Module 2--Teen Pregnancy focuses on a local health department's experience with an erroneous newspaper article about teen pregnancy. This module uses information from birth certificates, fetal death reports, and abortion reports to emphasize the difference between pregnancies and live births. The last section of this module introduces the concept of variability in numbers and rates and confidence intervals.

Module 3--Smoking and Health teams a local health department with a managed care organization to estimate the impact of smoking in their service area. The team utilizes data on smoking from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to develop a campaign to reduce smoking. This module introduces the concepts of prevalence, relative risk, and attributable risk.

Developed By
The Division of Health Promotion Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics; The Division of Media and Training Services, Public Health Practice Program Office; and public health professionals from the following States: Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Utah.

Prerequisites
Some simple calculation skills are needed; public health background is desired.

Target Audience
The intended audience is primarily personnel involved in planning and providing public health services in State and local health departments or community-based health agencies. The course is designed to illustrate how data can be used in public health and to provide participants with an introduction to some basic health statistics and the skills needed to use these statistics in their jobs.

Instructional Medium/Course Materials
Video tape and workbook.

For More Information
The video tape for Public Health Data: Our Silent Partner (1 tape, 76 minutes) will be made available to State health departments.

The video tape can be ordered through the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS):

Superintendent of Documents
U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington, DC 20402-9325
(202) 512-1800
GPO Stock Number 017-022-01478-5, Price $23.00

National Technical Information Service
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, VA 22161
(703) 487-4650
NTIS Stock Number AVA20835VNB1, Price $70.00

The complete set of materials video tape, workbook, Facilitator's Guide, and Student Guide can be ordered for $28.00 plus shipping and handling from the Public Health Foundation (PHS) Training Resource Center at http://bookstore.phf.org/prod100.htm or by calling 1-877-252-1200.

The workbook for Public Health Data: Our Silent Partner can be downloaded as follows.

This page last reviewed October 15, 2008