Public Health researchers are coming to the Lenox Heights and St Joseph neighborhoods beginning the week of April 15 to gather information about our health and our community. The Survey of the Health of Wisconsin, SHOW, has been gathering health information since 2008. They are building a database of information for researchers and community planners to use when looking for ways to combat the health problems that Wisconsin battles every day.
Dr. F. Javier Nieto, Director of SHOW, envisions “…the information SHOW collects through the years will play an important role in monitoring the health of Wisconsin people, and in guiding community and statewide health services.”
To achieve that vision, in 2013 SHOW researchers will visit 36 neighborhoods around the state collecting information from rural, suburban as well as urban areas; north as well as south and the cities along with the towns. Information is also collected to represent each area of Wisconsin across the seasons so that the survey looks at the ways weather and temperature affect our diet and our activity levels. The survey team will be calling on 36 households on Milwaukee’s west side the weeks of April 15, April 29 and May 20.
The result is a database that describes Wisconsin as we are today; and gives us a way to watch as we change in the future. SHOW provides the tools we need to measure our efforts to make Wisconsin healthier in the future. Some of the changes we make will begin because of information learned in the SHOW survey. Some existing programs will be improved because of information found in the surveys.
Dr Henry Anderson of the Division of Public Health believes, “…This survey will make us better equipped to ….make Wisconsin healthier than ever.”
SHOW is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and by the Partnership for a Healthy Future.
SHOW is a research project from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health expanding the boundaries of health science through research.
