From Research to Community Action: An Assessment of Child and Adolescent Hospitalizations

Population-based data sources describing severe childhood morbidity have been lacking in Virginia. Thus, passage of House Bill 2351 in 1993, which required hospitals to report patient level discharge data, established a mechanism to develop a new population data source. Subsequently, to describe the health status of children, the Virginia Department of Health commissioned a study using these data. The final report, a 189-page document, was distributed to state legislators, public health officials, health care associations, and other interested parties. This article presents key findings from the hospitalization assessment and provides an example of how the results were used to stimulate community action.