California Health Interview Survey

California Health Interview Survey
Name	California Health Interview Survey
Type	Research survey
Founded	2001
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Area served	California
Focus	Population health, health disparities, public policy
Parent organization	UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

Contents

California Health Interview Survey

The California Health Interview Survey is a large, state-level population health survey administered by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and designed to inform policy in California and influence federal programs such as the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and initiatives by agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. It provides health indicators used by institutions including the California Department of Public Health, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Shield of California, California State Legislature, Department of Health and Human Services (United States), and private foundations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation.

Overview

The survey was established through collaborations among the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, the California Department of Health Care Services, and philanthropic partners including the California Endowment and the Packard Foundation, producing repeated cross-sectional datasets spanning topics like insurance coverage, chronic disease prevalence, mental health, and access to care. Stakeholders range from California State Assembly committees and the California State Senate to advocacy organizations such as Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, La Clinica de La Raza, and national groups including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights network. Major media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, and NPR routinely cite its reports.

The survey uses standardized instruments influenced by national instruments like the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and the National Health Interview Survey, adapting items to California demographics and policy contexts such as PROP 187-era debates and California Proposition 64 implications. Questionnaire development has drawn on technical guidance from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the U.S. Census Bureau, and experts at institutions like Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the RAND Corporation. Measures include validated scales from sources such as the PHQ-9 depression screener and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale.

Data collection employs mixed-mode approaches including telephone, web, and mail, using sampling frames from the United States Postal Service and enhancements tied to American Community Survey data and decennial census tracts to ensure representation across regions like Los Angeles County, San Diego County, San Francisco County, Sacramento County, and the Central Valley (California). Sampling strategies implement stratification and weighting guided by standards from the U.S. Census Bureau and methods literature from researchers at University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Stanford University. The survey oversamples populations including Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander (United States), African American, and immigrant communities, and conducts interviews in languages used by groups such as Spanish language, Chinese language, Vietnamese language, Korean language, and Tagalog language speakers.

Findings have documented trends in uninsured rates influencing Medi-Cal enrollment analyses, impacts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on coverage, patterns of chronic conditions like diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and asthma, and behavioral risk factors including tobacco, alcohol, and obesity used by public health campaigns coordinated with the California Mental Health Services Act, First 5 California, and county public health departments. Researchers from UCLA, UC Berkeley, USC, and policy groups such as the Pew Charitable Trusts have used its data to examine disparities by race, ethnicity, immigration status, and geography, informing litigation, regulatory rulemaking at the California Department of Insurance, and program design by entities like Covered California and California Health and Human Services Agency.

The project publishes public-use microdata files, synthetic data products, and web-based query tools modeled after platforms from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research and the National Center for Health Statistics; users range from academics at University of California, Davis and University of California, Irvine to nonprofit analysts at Health Access California and journalists at outlets like the Mercury News. Documentation includes codebooks, technical reports, and methodology briefs prepared in collaboration with statisticians from NORC at the University of Chicago and software tools such as SAS, Stata, and R-compatible files.

Funding sources include state appropriations from the California State Budget, federal grants from agencies including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration, philanthropic grants from the Kresge Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund, and contracts with entities like the California Endowment and county public health departments. Governance involves advisory committees with representatives from universities including UCLA, UC Berkeley, non-profits such as Public Health Institute, and state bodies like the California Health Benefits Review Program.

Critiques published in venues such as Health Affairs, American Journal of Public Health, and reports by policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute note limitations including reliance on self-report measures similar to concerns raised about the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, potential nonresponse bias observed in state surveys across United States, challenges in measuring undocumented populations as discussed in analyses by Migration Policy Institute and the Pew Research Center, and constraints on longitudinal inferences since the survey is cross-sectional rather than a cohort study like the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Methodological debates involve weighting adjustments and small-area estimation techniques used by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Washington.

Category:Health surveys in the United States Category:Public health in California