the good doctor on: What is the Canadian Health Survey?

Blog #26

Do you remember taking a course in statistics?

Guess what, they are incredibly important. After you worked through the z scores and t tests you probably thought to yourself, “Well, I won’t be seeing that again.” Think again, just like the millions of lines of coding that go into a video game like Minecraft, the layers of numbers that get routinely crunched in the service of statistics is astounding. Two weeks ago Stats Canada contacted our household about the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and my son was randomly selected to complete the survey.

The CCHS is now done annually by randomly picking 65,000 Canadians to answer a number of questions related to health care: general health, mental health, nutrition, alcohol consumption, sexual practices, etc. Then the very bright people of Stats Canada compile and analyze the data and make it available to Canadians. This information helps with making health care decisions. For example, I went on the Stats Can websiteand put in the word diabetes and filtered out tabulated data for 2018-2019. Interesting findings, it should be no surprise that there was an increase in numbers of cases of diabetes in all brackets, but I was surprised just how substantial the increase was. Information like this helps health care providers and bureaucrats to plan, meet future needs, and implement preventive measures. At Burlington Eyecare we know that people with diabetes are at risk for “diabetic retinopathy” and they need to be seen regularly for a full eye exam to monitor their health. The eye exam includes a dilated fundus exam and optical coherence tomography to rule out any eye disease. Back in 2004 we purchased our first fundus camera to try to meet the growing demands of the diabetic population. It was numbers such as these from Stats Can which helped us decide to make these purchases and to fine tune our clinical practices.

I also need to mention, that the phone survey is professionally done, and all information gathered is kept strictly confidential. Please co-operate with Stats Canada when they contact you for the CCH Survey, should your household be selected.

Til next week,

The Good Doctor, Dr. Mark Germain, Burlington Eyecare