Several hundred Burnaby residents are in the process of getting measured, weighed and analyzed - even offering up blood samples - in an effort to create a better picture of the health of Canadians.
Jeanine Bustros, the director of the Canadian Health Measures Survey project being run by Statistics Canada, said that testing going on this week in Burnaby and Coquitlam caps off a two-year period of testing Canadians from coast to coast, with a goal of collecting information from more than 6,000 people in all.
"This will provide better information on the health of Canadians based on direct measurements," she told the NOW, noting that most health information is based on administrative files for individuals who have interacted with the health-care system. "We know, for example, how many people have been diagnosed by a doctor with diabetes or high cholesterol, but we don't know how many people are actually suffering (from those conditions) because there are people who have not been interacting with the system."
This current round of data collection is the second phase of the project, with results available to the public in September 2012; a third phase is expected to start in the spring in Ontario for more data collection.
Using a mobile clinic - two 53-foot long trailers connected with a pathway - the team has travelled to cities and communities around the country.
"We go into some remote areas, and some highly dense urban areas and some semi-dense - we go where the population is," said Bustros.
Respondents are selected at random, with participants ranging in age from three to 79 (children are co-selected with a parent); some, she notes, elect not to take part. Those who do go through two rounds of information gathering: first, an interview at home and, second, a visit to the lab with all information collected remaining anonymous.
The home interview includes questions on general health, nutrition, medical history, sexual activity and more.
The lab tests include everything from physical tests - like measuring skin folds to performing cardio and lung function tests - as well as blood and urine tests to look at health aspects like cholesterol, diabetes and environmental contaminants.
"Some of the contaminants would be lead, mercury, cadmium - there are others like asbestos, pthalates," she said.
Those who take part in the survey will receive their own test results, but all results will remain anonymous in the data collection and reports.
"This really allows us to compare ourselves to other countries, and even to look at variations in Canada, from one province or one community to another," she said. "At the moment, we have nothing."
Because of the breadth of information and length of the survey, she says they'll be able to make some connections between results and outcomes.
So far, she says, those who have been randomly selected have been mostly keen to take part.
"We are very lucky, Canadians believe in this kind of activity - there's been a high level of responding. This is very important data collection," she said.
Already, information from the first phase of the project has been used in additional research and the data collected will help shape public health policy and programs in the future.
For more information, see www.statcan.gc.ca/chms.
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