What's the Chemical Health of the Community?

Once a community decides to look at the chemical health of its population, it will want to assess how the community population uses alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. This can be accomplished by looking at survey data that describes, for example, the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco use, or how many people report drinking and driving. Data can be a most persuasive tool when trying to gather community support for an important chemical health issue. Don't avoid using the data that is available-just make sure it is "user friendly" and offers a clear message.

In addition, it is very important to assess the community's values and beliefs about the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, because the social and physical environment that surrounds people influences their behavior.

In Minnesota, community health boards are bound by statutory requirements to conduct a community-wide assessment of public health problems. It is appropriate and important to include chemical health as part of this assessment process because chemical health problems contribute to a wide range of public health problems.

The Chemical Health portion of the guide focuses on how to assess the chemical health of a community and provides specific chemical health data measures (or "chemical health indicators") that local public health staff and community members can easily collect for their county (or in some cases for their smaller community).

The list is not comprehensive, but is representative of the data that is available at this time. The data provided are available at the county level, unless otherwise indicated. Some state-level and national-level data have been included because they are the only measures available. In addition, state and national-level data can be useful for comparisons with county data.
The chemical health assessment process has been broken down into two steps:

Basic Community Assessment for Chemical Health asks the question:

  • Do we have chemical health problems in our community?

Additional Community Assessment for Chemical Health asks the question:

  • Specifically, what are the chemical health problems in our community?
    • Who is affected?
    • How are they affected?
    • What specifically can our community do to promote chemical health for each population affected?
    • What resources are available in our community to address chemical health problems?

Community Health Check Main Page

Chemical Health Community Health Promotion Guide Main Page

Community Health Promotion Guide Main Page



See also > Center for Health Promotion > Health Promotion and Chronic Disease