Measuring health-related quality of life (HRQoL) helps characterize the burden of disabilities and chronic diseases in a population. In addition to measuring how long people live, it is also important to include measures of how healthy people are while alive – and people’s reports of days when their physical health was not good are a reliable estimate of their recent health.

Reliability for the healthy days measures in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is high. In addition, a study examining the validity of healthy days as a summary measure for county health status found that counties with more unhealthy days were likely to have higher unemployment, poverty, percentage of adults who did not complete high school, mortality rates, and prevalence of disability than counties with fewer unhealthy days. Self-reported health outcomes differ by race/ethnicity, in part, because cultural differences in reporting patterns due to different definitions of health may exist. It is important to be aware of these differences when comparing across population groups.

For more information, please visit the Poor Physical Health Days for Cabarrus County Page on the Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings.

Poor Physical Health Days measures the average number of physically unhealthy days reported in the past 30 days. This measure is based on responses to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) question: “Now thinking about your physical health, which includes physical illness and injury, for how many days during the past 30 days was your physical health not good?” The value reported in the County Health Rankings is the average number of days a county’s adult respondents report that their physical health was not good. 

To learn more about the Measure Methods. Please visit the Poor Physical Health Days, Measure Methods Section, on the Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings Website.