CHIS

Houston Department of Health and Human Services > Community Services > Health Statistics: The Community Health Information System

Health Statistics:
The Community Health Information System

Disclaimer: Numbers of births or deaths in some census tracts may vary due to different methods of assignment for addresses/records between HDHHS and the Community Health Information System.

The Community Health Information System (CHIS) is a project dedicated to community health and well-being sponsored by the Episcopal Health Charities and St. Luke's Episcopal Health System. The CHIS integrates health and well-being indicators and measures on an interactive website that allows users to examine community health profiles, conduct population health assessments and link to community resources.

By using a free software program called Autodesk, the CHIS web site can provide you with additional statistical health information not found on the Houston Department of Health and Human Services web site. Here's how:

Go to the following URL: http://www.slehc.org/chis.htm

Then click on Finding Community Data in the left hand side of the page.

The Finding Community Data page contains maps that identify geographic areas of interest. Here you can obtain statistics on the population and health-related characteristics of various areas. The categories of data currently available are:

Population data - includes population by age, race/ethnicity, income, and education (data available at county, census tract and superneighborhood [City of Houston only] levels)
Birth data - includes births by birth weight, race/ethnicity, mother's age and education, and prenatal care (data available at the census tract level.
Death data - includes deaths by age, race/ethnicity, gender, and cause (data available at the census tract level)

Instructions for Use of Interactive Mapping

in Community Health Information System

Download and complete the self-installation of the free Autodesk viewer.
Re-start your PC.
Decide which category of data you want to work with first: Population, Birth, Death.
After you click on one of them, the map of Texas, with the outlines of the 57 counties will begin to load.
Click on the 'Zoom +' tool in the upper left toolbar; then click on the shape of Harris County on the map.
Repeat this step 5 times. The menu on the left will expand to give you choices of the geographic units you wish to view.
To see the data for births or deaths, check census tracts as the first layer; the map will re-load with the census tracts in blue outlines.
Let the mouse hover over any census tract in order to see the tract number. In Harris County, they will all start with 48 (for Texas), 201 (for Harris County), then the six digits for the tract: a leading 0 and 5 digits--the last 2 are decimal places indicating which decade the original tract was sub-divided due to growth.
You may also load the Zip Code, Public Health Service Area, SuperNeighborhood and School District layers over census tracts--but the view will be much too complex to see. Choose no more than two layers at a time. If you want to see approximately which census tracts are in a specific zip code or super neighborhood, load that layer over the census tracts. Each layer of outlines is in a different color.
If you want to see all the census tracts in a Public Health Service Area, check that layer (which is color-coded).
Hold down the SHIFT key and click on each tract for which you're interested in getting data. The search engine can only handle approximately 28 tracts at a time; more will return an error message. When all are highlighted, click on the 'Report' tool (next to the stop sign on the tool bar). You will see a list of the reports available for 1996, 1997 and 1998.
Choose the title of interest and click OK; the report will then appear in a new window for the census tracts you highlighted including the totals. You can then print or save the file to your hard drive (the files will open in EXCEL).
Click the X in the upper right corner to close the window--you can't back out. Your selected census tracts will still be highlighted if you want to view another report for those tracts--just repeat the process.
When you click on the map again, only the tract clicked will be highlighted. Hold SHIFT to click if you want to clear all of them--or just begin clicking another group of tracts.
You can also move the map in any direction to see other parts of it by clicking on the 'Hand' or 'Pan' tool (next to the 'Report' button).
Then click anywhere on the map--while holding down the mouse key-- and move it in the direction you want. The map will quickly re-load with the same layers for the area to which you moved. You can un-check a layer or print the map at any time.

In order to look at the data for another category (births, deaths or population), you must back out to the start page and click on that category, then repeat the zoom and selection process.