The utility of synthetic and regression estimation techniques for local health planning

Health planning agencies have long had a need for local area data on issues such as health status, utilization, and preventive care. Synthetic estimation and regression techniques have been advanced for use in adjusting national or regional data from the NCHS Health Interview Survey (HIS) to the local area based on demographic and other pertinent variables. To evaluate the accuracy and utility of these techniques for local health planning, estimates of certain key HIS variables were obtained from a telephone survey of 2,500 randomly selected households located in the Central Maryland Health Systems Agency (CMUSA). This paper presents results of the comparison between these telephone estimates and the corresponding estimates derived from the national HIS. The techniques are evaluated on the basis of data generally available to local planning agencies. Key words: synthetic estimation, health planning.