Canada Health Survey, 1978

This survey provides data on the lifestyle and health of Canadians, complementing existing administrative data bases. Major areas of coverage include risk factors, health status, and consequences. Risks to future health of three main types are identified and probed in the CHS. They are lifestyle, bio-medical and environmental. Lifestyle, in particular, lends itself to measurement in a household survey. Risks have an impact on future health, but, since the time element is missing from a cross-sectional survey, the CHS was restricted to examining the distribution of known hazards. Health status - only partially the outcome of earlier risk exposure - has positive and negative dimensions, which were measured for both the physical and emotional facets of health. Because morbidity statistics are most commonly derived from health records which report a single episode rather than entire histories, it is impossible to assess the personal burden of ill health, especially for those problems which do not reach the health care system. The CHS rectifies the situation by identifying health problems and their consequences for each individual in the sample, and using these to evaluate the impact of ill health.