Health tracked by community

Which are Utah's healthiest communities? Woods Cross and North Salt Lake. By contrast, Magna has the state's highest rate of poor health — a quarter of its adult population report health problems.

Meanwhile, Murray has the highest rate of doctor-diagnosed asthma in the state, while North Orem has the lowest rate.

A new state report offers Utahns a peek into health statistics on virtually a neighborhood level.

The Utah Department of Health's Utah Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System report categorizes data on health-related issues in 61 geographic areas, including specific regions within Utah's metropolitan areas.

Though the state has been releasing the report for years, this is the first time the data has been available at a community level, said Michael Friedrichs, a chronic disease epidemiologist who helped prepare the report.

The information is the result of 22,000 interviews conducted from 2001 to 2005 and provides information on issues ranging from how many vegetables Utahns eat to the percent of the population that binge drinks.

Friedrichs said he was surprised to find such large differences in the prevalence of certain health issues, even within the Salt Lake Valley.

Salt Lake City's Avenues area, for instance, has the lowest diabetes rate, while a portion of West Jordan has one of the state's highest rates.

"One of the things that this report does is that it makes all this data available for researchers and universities and Ph.D. students to start looking at that," Friedrichs said.

He said the communities now have a new source of area-specific data that can help them determine where best to devote resources.

"It gives us a way to use the money we have and for (others) to use the money they have to better target their efforts."

Friedrichs said health officials in Utah County, which has the lowest countywide percentage of smokers in the nation, used the data to find a spike of smokers in Springville and Spanish Fork.

The Utah County Department of Health and BYU students began spreading information in that area about the dangers of tobacco.

"As a result, the city's Parks and Recreation Department adopted a new policy that prohibits all tobacco use in baseball dugouts, on playing fields or any time during coaching," Friedrichs said in a prepared statement.

The report is available online at health.utah.gov/opha/publications/brfss/SA2001-2005/SA2001-2005.html.