In April 2007, the Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) launched a new Web site (www.healthyhawaii2010.org) that uses multiple data sources to provide statistics and reports about the health of Hawaii's residents. The statistics are intended to be used as a tool for policymakers, community health organizations, health care professionals, advocacy groups, and individuals. They can be used for program planning, creating policy, applying for grants, assessing community health, mobilizing and targeting health services, and setting benchmarks to monitor progress.
According to Director of Health Chiyome Fukino, M.D., "The public will have easy access to updated, comprehensive Department of Health data, and can compare differences in health among Hawaii's ethnicities, geographic areas, and varying income and educational levels."
The Healthy Hawaii site indicates, for example, that among Hawaii's women who gave birth in 2004, Native Hawaiians were most likely to have smoked during their last trimester of pregnancy (12.4%), compared with Japanese (7%), white (6.8%), Filipino (4.6%), and Chinese (1.9%) women. Moreover, Native Hawaiian women were more likely to be smokers three to six months after giving birth (19.4%), compared with white (12.6%), Filipino (9.1%), Japanese (7.4%), and Chinese (4.4%) women (see figure). This kind of information can be used to target interventions such as education about the health risks of smoking during and after pregnancy, and outreach for smoking cessation programs.
The state inaugurated the new site at a press event in April, and will follow up with training sessions and workshops for groups who would benefit from examining the health data on a regular basis. These include other state government agencies, nonprofit organizations, local foundations, and health-related coalitions. DOH epidemiologist Robert Hirokawa, D.C., acknowledges that dissemination is a critical issue, and the state needs to "make sure the Web site is used at its fullest capacity."
The new site is the portal to the Hawaii Health Data Warehouse, established in 2000 as a centralized data repository in which DOH staff can submit queries, create customized reports, and download data for analysis (the public has more limited access). It is the only centralized source of health data specific to Hawaii and its unique population, "allowing us to more clearly identify where health disparities exist," according to Hirokawa. Both the data warehouse and the new site are works in progress that will grow and evolve over time.
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