During Summer 2010, Cooley Dickinson Hospital employed a group of young people to go door to door and ask residents in Northampton to complete a short survey about their health and their ability to access resources in the community that may support healthy choices. The data presented here is a sample of the results from that survey.
The survey was limited to residents of the City of Northampton and its neighborhoods. While it was impossible to reach every neighborhood in Northampton, priority was given to the neighborhoods we knew were experiencing higher rates of preventable illnesses. The survey was available in Spanish and English. The survey was also available online through the Northampton Health Department’s website.
People in Northampton get sick and die from many preventable illnesses. Many of these illnesses can be prevented or controlled through changes in diet and physical activity habits. Cooley Dickinson Hospital wanted to understand some of the root causes to the preventable deaths we see occurring in Northampton so that prevention efforts can be more in sync with community needs.
We hope that this data will help us and our partners understand what is going on in real time at the community level. While the data was not based on a scientifically random sample, we believe that it is extremely useful as one of several sources of information that may help us delve deeper into the reasons behind the health problems we are seeing in Northampton.
Download the survey results here.
Downloads
Charts_for_community_event_survey.pdf 156.37 KB