Overview
Risk factor data systems are a relatively recent addition to the information systems arsenal of public health professionals. These systems complement vital statistics data systems and many morbidity data systems by providing information on factors that lie earlier in the causal chain leading to serious illness, injury, or death. There is a great variety of risk factor systems in use at the present time: some are designed to produce estimates for use at the national or regional level, whereas others are state- or local-level systems. Some focus on “pure” (predisease) risk factors (e.g., risk-taking behavior), whereas others focus on early disease states that represent risk factors for subsequently more serious disease or death. Some systems are designed to give cross-cutting estimates of many risk factors for a given population and time period (e.g., the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System), whereas others focus on particular risk factors or conditions (e.g., the Drug Abuse Warning Network). The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is a very rich data system that has been in use for some years. In this chapter, it is discussed in detail to illustrate the breadth, depth, complexity, and myriad uses of risk factor data systems.
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O’Carroll, P.W., Powell-Griner, E., Holtzman, D., Williamson, G.D. (2003). Risk Factor Information Systems. In: O’Carroll, P.W., Ripp, L.H., Yasnoff, W.A., Ward, M.E., Martin, E.L. (eds) Public Health Informatics and Information Systems. Health Informatics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-22745-8_16
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