Public health performance related to selected health status and risk measures.

Many public health interventions are targeted for high-risk locales. For this reason, health status and public health effort may appear inversely related. We designed a study to relate public health performance to health status or risk measures. This study hypothesized that differences in local need might prompt divergent levels of public health response and that the resultant diversity might imply disarray. From a group of 62 local health departments that have been the subject of intensive study, 34 were chosen serving jurisdictions with populations in excess of 100,000. Data were collected on selected health status as well as socioeconomic and budget measures. The data were then examined in a four-cell format, aggregating levels of public health performance with health status or risk levels according to each measure. The analysis of public health performance, when related to selected measures, suggests that public health endeavors may differ appropriately in different jurisdictions.