Member Health Survey

Division of Research Principal Investigator: Nancy P. Gordon, ScD

Primary Sources of Funding: Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Direct Community Benefit Investment Program, The Permanente Medical Group

Total Project Period: 1990 – Ongoing

Description: The Kaiser Permanente Adult Member Health Survey has been conducted every 3 years since 1993. Prior to the implementation of computer-based clinical and administrative data systems in Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Region to capture information about health conditions for which members were seeking care and procedures/lab tests performed, this survey was one of the only sources of information available to characterize the demographics, health, and behavioral health risks of the adult membership. The survey is still the most comparable source of statistics to results of other surveys based on self-reported data, such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Survey, California Health Interview Survey, and National Health Interview Survey.
The primary mission of the Member Health Survey Project is to provide information to health service planners, program/service managers, and researchers within Kaiser and in the broader community that can be used to:
• monitor the prevalence of health conditions, behavioral health risks, use of complementary and alternative medicine modalities, and access to and interest in using IT-based health information services over time among adults overall and among different segments of this insured population;
• explore disparities in socioeconomic factors, health, behavioral health risks, and access to/interest in health-related services in this population that are related to race/ethnicity, education, gender, and age;
• enhance the interpretability of health survey data by validating self-report against clinical and administrative data; and

• contribute to the conduct of high quality health services and epidemiologic research at the stages of study design, grant proposal preparation, sample selection, and manuscript development.
The director of this ongoing survey is Nancy P. Gordon, ScD. Funding has come primarily from Kaiser Permanente Northern California Region’s Community Benefit Program, with some additional support from The Permanente Medical Group, Inc.
For additional technical information about the survey, survey questionnaires, service population profile reports, and special topic reports, click on the link below to the Member Health Survey website or go to: http://dor-ent1.kaiser.org/dor/mhsnet/