Preface
The 2016
Indiana Health Behavior Risk Factors Report provides a summary of
the information collected from Indiana’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance
System (BRFSS) throughout 2016. The survey collects data from Indiana residents
on various modifiable health risks, preventive health measures, and demographic
variables. The objective of this report is to encourage change in risk-related
health behaviors, discover target populations for programs and resources, and
present the condition of Indiana’s health in a way that can be compared to the
health risk behaviors of the rest of the United States.
This report is intended for health
professionals, students, legislators, and others interested in the health
status of the Indiana community.
The Indiana State Department of
Health gratefully acknowledges the efforts of the residents of the State of
Indiana who took the time to respond to the survey questions asked in the
telephone interviews. The assistance and financial support provided
by the Population Health Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and our program partners inside and outside of the Indiana State
Department of Health is greatly appreciated.
A special acknowledgment is also extended to the staff of Clearwater
Research, Inc., who committed themselves to collecting these BRFSS data in an accurate and professional manner.
Notes:
Since the 2009 Indiana Health
Behavior Risk Factors Report, the "Unk/Ref" category (that indicates
that the respondent declined to answer the question or was uncertain of the
correct response) has been omitted from the tables. While it may be
useful to examine this category for certain questions, restricting the report
solely to those respondents who provided a response allows a direct comparison
with the prevalence and trends data that CDC provides for Indiana (http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html).
The race and ethnicity categories are those provided by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC); Black is understood to mean Black or African
American. Other demographic groupings are either conventional or provide
useful classifications for Indiana respondents.
For reporting of the two child
asthma variables, the child's racial classification was constructed from a
combination of the bridged race and the racial variables, grouping the data
into three groups: white, black, and other.
Ethnicity, sex, and age of the children were available from data in the file.