Estimating Local Prevalence of Obesity Via Survey Under Cost Constraints: Stratifying ZCTAs in Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Health District

Abstract

Currently, the most reliable estimate of the prevalence of obesity in Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson Health District (TJHD) comes from an annual telephone survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This district-wide estimate has limited use to decision makers who must target health interventions at a more granular level. A survey is one way of obtaining more granular estimates. This article describes the process of stratifying targeted geographic units (here, ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, or ZCTAs) prior to conducting the survey for those situations where cost considerations make it infeasible to sample each geographic unit (here, ZCTA) in the region (here, TJHD). Feature selection, allocation factor analysis, and hierarchical clustering were used to stratify ZCTAs. We describe the survey sampling strategy that we developed, by creating strata of ZCTAs; the data analysis using the R survey package; and the results. The resulting maps of obesity prevalence show stark differences in prevalence depending on the area of the health district, highlighting the importance of assessing health outcomes at a granular level. Our approach is a detailed and reproducible set of steps that can be used by others who face similar scenarios. Supplementary files for this article are available online.

Keywords

• population health
• small area
• stratification
• zip code tabulation area