Vital Signs, a multi-year collaborative research and action project, is informed by an ecological model emphasizing the interactive and dynamic nature of demographic, social and economic factors as the context for individual and community health and well-being.
For research purposes, Vital Signs has expanded the World Health Organization's definition of health to encompass both individuals and communities in its description of social health:
On the level of the person, social health is the experience of physical, emotional and social well-being that enables individuals to successfully carry out the tasks of daily living, engage in productive work, and/or learning, establish self sufficiency and/or have access to material sufficiency (e.g. adequate housing, food), enjoy social interactions without fear, reproduce and grow old. Social health on the community level is the capacity to provide an environment within which individuals can develop and maintain a sense of physical, emotional and social well-being, and the ability to develop and allocate resources that can address, reduce and/or ameliorate those conditions which inhibit the achievement of individual social health.
Vital Signs 33 working indicators are based on the following categories:
- Physical health: mortality, morbidity, fertility
- Mental health
- Community and individual well-being
- Housing/food support
Indicator data specific to each of the categories were reported in the June 2006 and June 2007 Vital Signs reports. The next update for the indicators is anticipated for winter/spring 2009.
As relevant to its analysis, Vital Signs uses demographic and social data to surface the relationships between social health indicators and the demographic and social characteristics of Long Island's communities. This type of analysis highlights different problems and risks and exposes potential points for intervention.
- Age (childhood, youth, adult, older adult)
- Gender
- Race/ethnicity
- Foreign-born population
- Highest level of education
- Unemployment rate
- Percent households at or below 50% the median income
- Insurance coverage: type of coverage at discharge and/or rate based on eligibility (Medicaid, Child Health, Medicare)
- Geographic location
In 2007, in partnership with Nassau Health Care Corporation’s Institute for HealthCare Disparities and North Shore – LIJ’s Office of Strategic Planning, Vital Signs developed and implemented a bilingual telephone survey to assess Nassau and Suffolk County resident experiences accessing and utilizing health care services. This bilingual survey, administered by Princeton Survey Research Associate, Inc., involved over 1,500 Long Island adults. In January 2008, Vital Signs released The Long Island Health Care Survey (LIHCS), a report presenting findings from the survey. The project’s latest report (May 2008), Long Island’s Immigrants: Health Status and Health Care Access, uses LIHCS data to more closely examine health care access factors for foreign-born Long Islanders.
Future Vital Signs projects will build on the issues which have emerged from previous research activities and will develop in response to research needs articulated by community providers and advocates.
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