How healthy are we? 2007 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH Table of contents Population for the Capital Health region, 2007 A word from the Medical Officer of Health 1 Age Group Females Males Total Health statistics by public health service area 3 < 1 6,725 6,888 13,613 Population 5 1 -4 24,532 25,907 50,439 Health through the ages 8 5-9 29,977 31,655 61,632 Babies 9 10-14 33,104 34,897 68,001 Children and youth 17 15-19 36,448 37,958 74,406 Adults 28 20-44 198,859 197,129 395,988 Seniors 36 45-64 138,832 139,428 278,260 Urban sprawl and population health 44 65-74 32,981 30,424 63,405 Data notes 55 75+ 33,384 21,981 55,365 Keeping you informed 56 Total 534,842 526,267 1,061,109 Legal Redwater Highway 2 Bon Accord Gibbons Morinville Hwy 15 Fort Hutterite Sturgeon County Saskatchewan Colony Josephburg Strathcona MacKay St. Albert Wildwood County Elk Island National Nojack Entwistle Spruce Grove Highway 16 Park Evansburg Highway 16 Fallis Sherwood Ardrossan Wabamun Park Stony Plain Antler Lake Westview Half Moon Lake North 21 Collingwood Cove Cooking Edmonton Lake Edmonton South Tomahawk Cooking Hastings Lake Keephills Lake Highway Highway 14 Beaumont Genesee Devon Nisku St. Francis New Highway 2 Telfordville Highway 39 Leduc Sarepta Calmar Rolly View Hutterite Colony Thorsby Buford Sunnybrook Kavanagh Warburg Leduc County Mission Beach Sundance Beach Golden Days Castle North East Capital Health in Edmonton is Canada’s largest Downs health region and is affiliated with the North Central University of Alberta, providing integrated health Woodcroft Eastwood services to more than one million residents in Edmonton and the surrounding area. West Jasper Place Capital Health acts as a referral centre to central Bonnie Doon and northern Alberta, the North and the Prairies, providing specialized services such as trauma Twin Brooks and burn treatment, organ transplants Mill Woods and high-risk obstetrics. How healthy are we? / 2007 we? are healthy How Edmonton A word from the Medical Officer of Health What is a Medical Officer of Health? Unlike most to test the region’s readiness, including the physicians, who are responsible solely for the trial run of off-site pandemic triage centres health of their patients, a Medical Officer of during last year’s influenza season. Health is responsible for the health of whole G Recent increases in syphilis and mumps speak populations – the public’s health. As the Medical both to the importance of surveillance and the Officer of Health for the Capital Health region, I need to be vigilant when it comes to the oversee a wide range of programs and services health of the public. We are now participating that protect and promote the public’s health. in province-wide campaigns to control the Many of these activities take place behind the spread of these communicable diseases that scenes, where we work to ensure safe drinking many people thought were a thing of the past. water, clean air, safe housing and clean We continue to enhance our surveillance restaurants. Others take place in public health systems to provide real time information on centres, schools, community centres and private disease outbreaks. Our ability to respond homes where we screen for health problems, quickly to local outbreaks – or a global distribute vaccines and provide health pandemic – depends on an effective early information. This is the day-to-day work of public warning system. health but new challenges are always on the G Other ways in which we are meeting new horizon. Here are just a few to which we are challenges include public access to restaurant responding: inspection information that individuals can G Alberta’s fast growing population has created access online. Starting in July 2008, we will significant public health issues, including also be involved in developing a provincial safe homelessness and the need for affordable water drinking system and an Alberta Capital housing. Our staff is involved in finding Airshed Alliance to monitor and address local solutions to homelessness with our air quality issues. community partners, and was instrumental in How healthy are we? The Annual Report of the providing safe drinking water and sanitation Medical Officer of Health is our report to you on facilities for Edmonton’s “tent city” in the the health of our population and some of the summer of 2007. key trends and factors that impact our health. G In recent years, we established the Office of New this year, we have presented health data Emergency Preparedness (OEP) to make sure by age group – babies, children and youth, we are ready in the event of a pandemic or adults and seniors – and have answered three How healthy are we? / 2007 we? are healthy How other major public health emergency. The OEP questions for each group: Why do they go to conducts ongoing exercises and simulations the emergency department? Why do they go 1 to hospital? And why do they die? We have A word about the data….. provided health and census information in table format by the 15 public health service Capital Health region residents areas that comprise the Capital Health region. Additional data are available for the public The data used in this report are for people living in the Capital Health region. It excludes those health service areas in the document Capital people who may have received service in the Health Quick Facts, 2008. And a new report, region but reside outside the region. For Perinatal Health Status in the Capital Health example, there are many women who have their Region, 2008, has been created to provide babies in the Capital Health region but do not additional information on pregnancies and live in the region – these babies are not included births in the region. Both documents are in this report. available on the Capital Health website. Finally, we have also included a detailed Public Health Service Areas (PHS areas) section on the health implications of urban sprawl – a phenomenon that has The PHS areas for the Capital Health region are characterized much of the growth in the shown on the map on the inside front cover. region over the last several decades. The Data are provided by the 15 areas where possible. decisions we make today will not only affect our own health but will continue to be felt by Hospitalizations populations 50 years from now. We need to The term hospitalization is used to mean make the right decisions and I hope that this hospital discharge as opposed to hospital report will help decision makers in this admission. This is important when process. hospitalizations are compared across calendar years. For example, a person admitted to hospital in 2000 and discharged in 2001 will be counted among hospitalizations for 2001. Rates and Confidence Intervals Rates (e.g. death rate, birth rate) are calculated for PHS areas as well as for the Dr. Gerry Predy region as a whole. On the charts that show Vice President, Public Health rates for each PHS area, the black dot Medical Officer of Health represents the rate while the shaded areas Capital Health, Alberta surrounding the dot display the confidence interval. The confidence interval, calculated by multiplying 1.96 times the standard error, shows that there is a 95% chance that the “true” rate will fall within the shaded area surrounding the dot. Public health service area regions R601 St. Albert R609 Bonnie Doon R602 Castle Downs R610 Mill Woods R603 Woodcroft R61 1 Strathcona County R604 Eastwood R612 Leduc County R605 North Central R613 Westview R606 North East R614 Sturgeon County R607 West Jasper Place R6 15 Fort Saskatchewan How healthy are we? / 2007 we? are healthy How R608 Twin Brooks 2 3 How healthy are we? / 2007 Table 1: Health Statistics by Public Health Service Area, 2006 Region R601 R602 R603 R604 R605 R606 R607 R608 R609 R610 R611 R612 R613 R614 R615 Number of live births 13,116 591 776 840 733 909 1,127 1,375 1,383 866 1,563 887 516 959 426 162 Number of deaths 6,197 280 225 611 565 525 415 620 522 721 397 370 224 395 149 84 Population 1,028,734 56,932 47,175 80,030 60,877 70,199 75,377 105,047 97,580 86,664 104,773 82,225 41,989 73,632 31,233 15,001 Crude birth rate (# live births per 1,000) 12.7 10.4 16.4 10.5 12.0 12.9 15.0 13.1 14.2 10.0 14.9 10.8 12.3 13.0 13.6 10.8 General fertility rate (# live births per 1,000 females 15-49 years of age) 48.1 40.1 58.2 39.6 47.1 51.4 54.3 48.8 53.3 38.0 53.0 41.6 48.2 51.5 50.7 41.7 Teen birth rate (# live births per 1,000 females 15-19 years of age) 17.2 4.5 20.4 33.2 41.5 22.5 30.6 16.0 7.7 15.9 13.8 4.9 11.0 20.5 13.9 15.2 % Live births to women 35 years of age and older 16.1 22.3 14.3 17.1 14.2 15.4 11.1 16.8 21.3 23.1 13.8 18.2 12.6 12.3 12.0 11.7 High birth weight (% live births >3,999 grams) 10.7 11.3 12.1 11.5 10.8 9.8 9.6 9.1 8.5 11.4 10.7 13.4 12.8 10.8 10.3 16.7 Preterm birth (% live births < 37 weeks) 9.1 8.8 7.5 10.5 14.1 9.0 10.1 8.2 8.9 8.8 8.9 8.5 10.3 8.4 7.7 6.2 Infant mortality rate (# deaths to babies less than 1 year of age per 1,000 live births) 6.4 4.8 3.7 6.8 9.7 5.7 6.3 5.2 3.4 8.0 6.6 4.1 3.8 7.3 5.8 3.6 Life expectancy for females (years) 82.7 84.4 84.2 81.7 80.1 82.2 81.9 83.0 84.3 83.0 82.8 83.3 84.4 82.4 81.7 82.5 Life expectancy for males (years) 77.9 79.1 78.2 76.3 72.3 77.5 76.3 79.0 80.7 77.5 78.9 79.8 80.0 77.5 76.8 78.6 Hospitalization rate (per 1,000) 63.5 58.7 59.2 66.9 84.7 60.6 66.1 58.1 52.1 59.2 58.9 57.2 76.8 65.6 80.0 84.2 Emergency department visit rate (per 1,000) 397.8 406.9 348.8 361.7 499.8 409.8 477.5 333.5 237.4 290.7 327.1 224.3 637.1 641.6 596.3 791.2