Using Small-Area Estimation to Calculate the Prevalence of Smoking by Subcounty Geographic Areas in King County, Washington, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2009-2013.

Introduction: King County, Washington, fares well overall in many health indicators. However, county-level data mask disparities among subcounty areas. For disparity-focused assessment, a demand exists for examining health data at subcounty levels such as census tracts and King County health reporting areas (HRAs).

Menu labeling regulations and calories purchased at chain restaurants.

Background: The federal menu labeling law will require chain restaurants to post caloric information on menus, but the impact of labeling is uncertain.

Purpose: The goal of the current study was to examine the effect of menu labeling on calories purchased, and secondarily, to assess self-reported awareness and use of labels.

Design: Single-community pre-post-post cross-sectional study.

Effective community health assessments in King County, Washington.

Background: Community health assessment (CHA) is widely practiced in public health, but its effectiveness has seldom been evaluated.

Method: We present three examples of successful CHAs, carried out by Public Health-Seattle & King County, with diverse strategies: a quantitative assessment of asthma hospitalizations; Communities Count, a set of social and health indicators paired with qualitative data; and Growing Up Healthy, an assessment using qualitative methods to provide guidance for a statewide media campaign on youth sexual abstinence.

Findings: These assessments were successful in attracting new resources, forming and sustaining new partnerships, and/or providing guidance or resources for program and policy development.

Disparities in obesity rates: analysis by ZIP code area.

Obesity in the United States has been linked to individual income and education. Less is known about its geographic distribution. The goal of this study was to determine whether obesity rates in King County, Washington State, at the ZIP code scale were associated with area-based measures of socioeconomic status and wealth.

Innovations in user-defined analysis: dynamic grouping and customized user datasets in VistaPHw.

Flexible, ready access to community health assessment data is a feature of innovative Web-based data query systems. An example is VistaPHw, which provides access to Washington state data and statistics used in community health assessment. Because of its flexible analysis options, VistaPHw customizes local, population-based results to be relevant to public health decision-making.