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.

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    INTRODUCTION A basic aspect of the scientific approach to im- provement of health is measurement of the amount and distribution of illness in the total population. Until recent years such quantitative knowledge of illness was limited to the information which could be derived from death certificates, from quite in- complete reports of communicable diseases and from fragmentary data in hospital records and in- surance programs. The need for a more adequate measure of illness as it affects the whole population is becoming urgent for the further advance of public health. Planning in the field of health requires that we have information to rank diseases according to their relative importance as causes of illness, to identify population groups in which illness is con- centrated, and to forecast the future trends of illness. Knowledge of current morbidity experi- ence in relation to medical care will help guide California’s specific concern with obtaining in- formation about illness in the general population grew out of a 1947 directive from the Legislature to the State Department of Public Health to in- vestigate chronic illness in the State. The absence of any except the most fragmentary data impeded this work at every turn. Reliable information was needed to answer such questions as: What are the major causes of chronic illness in California? Which segments of the population suffer most severely? How much time is lost from work be- cause of arthritis and rheumatism, heart disease, and chronic respiratory conditions? How does chronic illness affect the utilization of hospitals? Not only were data lacking on these questions but considerable uncertainty prevailed as to the 6 the development of hospitals and related health facilities and services. Data on the extent of illness and use of health services among various popula- tion groups will facilitate progress in medical economics. Awareness of the association between types of illness and age, sex, occupation, income level, and other characteristics of people may suggest hy- potheses for research into the causation of disease. It also permits those concerned with preventive medicine to concentrate their efforts on segments of the population which carry the greatest risk for certain diseases. The effect of illness on man- power and its utilization is attaining greater im- portance not only because of current sickness ab- senteeism and its associated economic loss, but also for projecting labor force characteristics in respect to aging and other aspects of population change. most appropriate methods for collecting the data. What use could be made of information from dis- ability insurance programs and medical care plans? Was a general population sample desirable? How much reliance could be placed upon household in- terviews as a source of information about illness? As the Department examined these problems it became apparent that information about the occur- rence of all types of illness in relation to charac- teristics of the State’s residents would serve many public health interests, besides chronic disease con- trol. For example, work toward preventing the common diarrheal and respiratory diseases was impeded by a lack of understanding of their dis- tribution throughout the State among various groups of the population and in various seasons.
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