Utah administration of the Youth Risk Behavior and School Health Profiles surveys - The Utah Department of Health and Human Services’ (UDHHS) Office of Health Promotion and Prevention (OHPP) has a rich history of using school-based data for surveillance, evaluation, and assessment of progress towards performance measures in programs addressing diabetes, asthma, cancer control, heart disease and stroke, physical activity, nutrition & obesity, Tobacco Prevention and Control, and Violence and Injury Prevention. The OHPP includes Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and School Health Profiles (Profiles) data in many reports, fact sheets, grant applications, and educational websites. It is imperative for OHPP to have a good understanding of youth risk behaviors and school health policies and practices in order to target and evaluate programmatic efforts, engage stakeholders, perform routine surveillance to identify emerging problems, and apply for funding. OHPP plans to administer YRBS and Profiles, including state-added questions, throughout the grant period to continue these efforts. YRBS and Profiles data inform stakeholders, including health professionals, policy makers, schools, and other partners, about current health-related policies and environments in Utah’s schools. The OHPP also uses data to raise awareness of adolescent risk behaviors and to drive changes in school health policies and programs. Reports, fact sheets, and other documents containing school survey data are shared with health and social services professionals and agencies, the state legislature, the media, libraries, state universities, and the general public. Individual custom queries can be performed on the Utah YRBS database (http://ibis.health.utah.gov), including the option to combine data from different years in order to increase precision for less common risk behaviors/conditions like drug use and asthma. Utah has conducted both the YRBS and Profiles since the surveys’ respective inceptions. The administration of both surveys is overseen by the coordinator, housed in OHPP. Bach-Harrison, LLC, a local survey company works with the schools to administer YRBS survey completion. In spite of state legislation requiring active consent, the UDHHS has diligently obtained weighted data from every administration of YRBS other than 2015. Subsequently, Bach Harrison, LLC’s worked diligently to enhance marketing the survey project to the selected schools (administrators, teachers, and parents) to increase participation rates, collecting active parental consent forms, training local survey administrators and teachers to administer the surveys in the classroom, bi-weekly submission of the YRBS tracking form, and submitting surveys in accordance with CDC standards. The UDHHS is seeking continuing CDC support in order to sustain the invaluable surveillance and program evaluation activities made possible by both YRBS and Profiles data. Funding will be used to improve the quality of the administration of the surveys and increase dissemination and use of the results.
