Health in California : California health survey.

  • California Department of Public Health
Date:
[1957]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health in California : California health survey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/100 page 54
    diagnoses is shown in the accompanying table. In addition to the roster of persons with specif- ically reported coronary heart disease, the Survey revealed another group of persons reported to have heart disease, type unspecified. Preliminary investigation of these patients suggests that about one-third of them will be confirmed by the at- tending physician as having coronary heart dis- ease. Those confirmed as having coronary heart disease, together with controls matched for age and sex, will also be interviewed to determine the presence or absence of suspected associated factors. Finally, comparable information is to be sought from family members of persons who did not For the past three years the State Department of Public Health under a grant of funds from the Kellogg Foundation, has been assembling data on accidental injuries in California and conducting research on methods of collecting further infor- mation about accidents which can be applied to accident prevention programs. Such programs have been impeded by the fragmentary nature of information about accidental injuries. Isolated studies had been conducted in certain local areas, with data limited to emergency hospital reports. These studies were not designed to provide in- formation about the accident experience of the general population. In order to answer some of the basic questions involved in starting a statewide program of accident prevention, the staff of the Home Safety Project turned to the California Health Survey. Through the Survey, it was pos- sible to obtain statewide information on nonfatal accidents. For each accident reported, the Survey obtained a description of how and where the accident hap- pened. This enabled the Home Safety Project to classify the accidents according to a code the project staff designed to give a more complete de- scription of nonfatal accidents than the traditional classification of the International Statistical Classi- fication of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death. The Project studied in some detail factors relating to each of these types of accidents. For each accident, the Survey also obtained in- formation on medical attendance, hospitalization and disability. One of the most useful measures of the severity of accidental injuries is the amount of disability caused. An injury was defined as “dis- abling” if it kept an individual in bed, prevented him from going out of doors, or otherwise inter- fered with his usual activities. An example of the data obtained is presented in the following table. 54 yet died from coronary heart disease within one year after the Survey. Thus information will be available from three groups in the Survey popula- tion: those reporting coronary heart disease; those reporting heart disease (type unspecified), con- firmed by attending physicians as coronary heart disease; and those not reporting coronary heart disease at the time of the Survey but whose death certificates gave coronary heart disease as the underlying cause of death. Analysis of the data from these various groups will permit examination of several hypotheses as to the etiology of occur- rence of coronary heart disease, an examination based upon a total population sample rather than a selected series. INCIDENCE OF ACCIDENTS AND PERCENT DISABLING Rate per 1000 Percent Age and Sex Persons Per Year Disabling Total, All Ages Male Female 0-4 years, total Male Female 5 - 14 years, total Male Female 15 - 44 years, total Male Female 65 years and over, total The incidence of accidents shows a consistent de- cline with age. Children under five have the high- est rate, slightly over one accident per child per year. However, these very young children have a lower proportion of disabling accidents than do the older age groups. The table on page 55 shows the distribution of injuries resulting from accidents. “Superficial in- juries and contusions” and “lacerations and open wounds” are the most common types of injuries; “sprains and strains,” although less common, are more likely to cause disability. Males have rates approximately equal to or higher than the rates for females for all major injury except for burns. When disabling accidents are considered, males have about the same or higher rates than females, for all types of accidents.
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