Last week I wrote about our Behavioral Health Outcomes Dashboard <https://directorsblog.health.azdhs.gov/?p=1117> – which highlights our efforts to shift our performance measures toward actual outcomes. In other words, we want to measure whether the services we provide actually help folks achieve their goals rather than whether someone’s paperwork is right.
The same is true for public health- our goal is to influence actual outcomes- meaning we need to measure whether the public health system is actually helping people to live healthier lives. That’s where our recent document written by Christopher Mrela comes in. The new report, called Differences in the Health Status, Arizona 2009 <http://www.azdhs.gov/plan/report/dhsag/index.htm> gives us a glimpse into Arizona public health outcomes.
The report looks at 70 measures of health in AZ over the last 10 years. In other words- it helps us measure how much progress we’ve made in public health outcome measures between 2000 and 2009. For example, the death rate for heart related diseases (the leading cause of death) fell by 32% over the last 10 years. Likewise, the cancer death rate (#2) fell by 14%. Death rates from stroke fell by a whopping 40% over the last 10 years. Other areas that showed improvement included teen pregnancy (which is associated with a whole host of bad outcomes), which dropped by 41%. Infant mortality improved by 12%. The death rate from influenza and pneumonia was 40% lower in 2009 than in 2000. Even mortality from diabetes improved by 17% in the same period.
Don’t get the idea that everything’s hunky-dory because not all the 70 measures improved. The death rate from falls increased by 37% and suicides went up by 10%.
Overall we see that Arizona as a whole has become more healthy and continues to improve. Be sure to look at the full report at the other measures that are compared to get a greater understanding of the health of our state- and make sure that you bookmark this new public health outcomes report <http://www.azdhs.gov/plan/report/dhsag/index.htm> . Well done Chris!
P.S.- For a whole host of AZ Public Health outcome measures be sure to visit http://www.arizonahealthmatters.org/
