Poor Physical Health – Days
This indicator reports the average number of self-reported physically unhealthy days in past 30 days among adults (age-adjusted to the 2000 standard). Data were from the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) annual survey and are used for the 2025 County Health Rankings.
Source
Accessed via County Health Rankings.
Source Description
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is
“… a collaborative project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and U.S. states and territories. The BRFSS, administered and supported by CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Branch, is an ongoing data collection program designed to measure behavioral risk factors for the adult population (18 years of age or older) living in households.”
Citation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services. Overview: BRFSS 2010.
The health characteristics estimated from the BRFSS include data pertaining to health behaviors, chronic conditions, access and utilization of healthcare, and general health. Surveys are administered to populations at the state level and then delivered to the CDC and tabulated into county estimates by the BRFSS analysis team. Beginning with the 2016 County Health Rankings, the CDC produces county estimates using single-year BRFSS data and a multilevel modeling approach based on respondent answers and their age, sex, and race/ethnicity, combined with county-level poverty, as well as county- and state-level contextual effects. To produce estimates for those counties where there were no or limited data, the modeling approach borrowed information from the entire BRFSS sample as well as Census Vintage 2014 population estimates. CDC used a parametric bootstrapping method to produce standard errors and confidence intervals for those point estimates. This estimation methodology was validated for all U.S. counties, including those with no or small (<50 respondents) samples.
Methodology
Indicator percentages are acquired for year 2022 from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) prevalence data, accessible through the University of Wisconsin’s County Health Rankings. Indicator data are generated based on valid responses to the following question:
“Now thinking about your physical health, which includes physical illness and injury, for how many days during the past 30 days was your physical health not good?”
The value reported the average number of days a county’s adult respondents report that their physical health was not good. The measure is age-adjusted to the 2000 US population. Additional detailed information about the BRFSS, including questionnaires, data collection procedures, and data processing methodologies are available on the BRFSS web site. For additional information about the single-year estimates displayed here, please visit the Poor Physical Health Days indicator information.
This indicator is available at the following subscription levels:
- Premium (currently viewing this indicator and report combination)