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Show Section 3: Risk Factors Lifestyle behaviors impact our health for good or bad. We have control over these behaviors and it is everyone's individual responsibility to avoid risk behaviors and to promote their own good health. Many risk factors such as violent crime, child abuse, and adolescent births will take community involvement to decrease their prevalence through education, law enforcement, etc. Prevention of these risk factors will greatly improve our communities' health. Risk factors covered in this section include Behavioral Risk Factors, which examine physical activity, overweight status, and seat belt usage; Alcohol, Tobacco, and Substance Abuse; Environmental Health, which includes the relationship between air quality and health; and additional categories of violent crime, child abuse, births to adolescents, and immunizations. Behavioral Risk Factors The risk factor data in this subsection come from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The BRFSS is a state-based random telephone survey conducted monthly throughout the U.S. of non-institutionalized adults over age 18. Data are reported annually. Some questions in this survey are asked every other year, so there are gaps in some data. The survey began in 1984 with a small group of states, including Utah, and has expanded to cover all states, the District of Columbia, and three territories. The data for the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Substance Abuse section comes from the Utah Household Survey on Substance Abuse. For the risk factors reported here, Utah's results are compared to U.S. low, median, and high scores. "Low" and "high" scores refer to the states with the lowest and highest scores. "Median" scores refers to the state whose score falls in the middle of all the states' scores. The scores are given in percentages of persons reporting the indicated behaviors. Based upon the assumption that healthier lifestyles decrease the risk for disease, a lower score for a state means a lower percentage of that state's residents are at risk. Ill |