Louisiana BRFSS 2024-2029 - The 2023 Americas Health Ranking Annual Report places Louisiana at 50th in the United States. The Louisiana Budget Project, citing 2022 US Census data, places Louisiana second highest in poverty, third highest in child poverty, third lowest in income and sixth highest in income inequality. Median income varies widely by race with Blacks earning 53.6% less than Whites. US News Report ranks Louisiana sixth in the nation for food insecurity at 15% and the American Household Survey places shelter insecurity at 15%. While uninsured (health) rates remain relatively low, they vary by race with Native Americans at 4.7 times and Asians at 6.7 times that of Whites. Social insecurity and inequality manifest in poor physical and mental health outcomes. The BRFSS funding that the Louisiana Office of Public Health has received from the CDC since 1989 has played a major role in maintaining a reliable, accurate and timely database of the chronic conditions and associated behaviors that plague a major proportion of this state's population. Access to this well-curated data source has informed state actions to: - track endemic conditions of poor health, - identify emerging health problems and risky behaviors, - demonstrate sub-population disparities in the prevalence of chronic conditions and health care access, - target financial resources to improve outcomes of public health initiatives and - evaluate the effectiveness and reach of interventions to reduce disparities, morbidity and mortality. OPH programs, internal partners and external stakeholders rely on this data to define target populations and track effects of interventions at the state and regional level, but there is an increasing need to track this information at a more granular level. Actions to elicit this sub-state level information are presented in our response to this offering. Relying on the expertise and experience of the La. Office of Public Health and LSU's Public Policy Research Lab (LABRFSS call center), we describe the methodology, refined over time, that is used to collect, clean, submit, analyze and report on Louisiana's BRFSS data. Additionally, we present three sub-state, under represented communities that will be targeted for participation in the BRFSS process. We hope to develop methodologies that can be used to gain hard data on similar underserved population that have traditionally remained undescribed.
