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Article: National Health Surveys
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Public Health
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NATIONAL HEALTH SURVEYS
The United States is unique in having several national health surveys. Other countries have good surveys, but for the most part they are not national and one must assume that, for example, the southeast part of a country is like the northwest. Because the United States has national surveys, we know whether the southeast is, or is not, like the northwest. That provides us a great advantage in formulating policy for a country as large and diverse as the United States. For this article, four national surveys and one state-based survey have been selected to illustrate the kinds of impact each can have. The basis for this choice was that each of the surveys has a ...