Oregon Student Health Survey (SHS) Data Portal

About

The Student Health Survey is the sole source of statewide data on the health and well-being of Oregon youth.

Youth Voice

The SHS is the largest youth-centered Oregon survey that obtains information directly from students with a diversity of experiences, backgrounds, incomes, geographic locations, identities, and cultures. The SHS provides a snapshot of how students are doing physically, emotionally and socially.

Centering Health and Wellbeing in Education

A hungry or distracted mind makes it difficult for students to focus and achieve academic success. Active, well-nourished, well-supported and connected youth are more likely to attend school, arrive ready to learn, and stay engaged in class.

Survey results are a valuable tool for identifying, understanding and addressing health conditions that contribute to barriers for young people in school. Districts and schools can use SHS results to take steps to strengthen educational and health outcomes for students through the development of systems and partnerships

I'm late for math class.
that support students’ physical, mental and behavioral health with the long-term aim of achieving the academic improvements specified in the Student Success Act (SSA).

Survey data can help address health and education outcomes for focal student groups defined within the SSA as those who are at increased risk for health problems which impact learning due to inequitable conditions in neighborhoods, homes and schools, such as:

  • Students of color
  • Students with disabilities
  • Emerging bilingual students
  • Students navigating poverty, homelessness, and foster care
  • LGBTQ2SIA+ students
  • Other students who have historically experienced disparities
Survey Data Tells Only Part of the Story
Data analysis often focuses on disparities and gaps to guide our work. But data and statistics alone lack context and fail to capture the rich history and culture of many communities. Participatory analysis can provide community-led insight and context to better explain the whys of survey results.

Focus on Equity to Eliminate Disparities

The Oregon Health Authority’s goal is to eliminate health disparities by 2030. What does that mean? Some groups of people experience persistent differences in health and health

care that stem from broader systemic inequities, such as unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources which result from racism and discrimination. Our goal is to ensure that everyone has the same opportunities to be healthy regardless of who they are, where they live or what they believe.

OHA is grateful to our community partners, the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition, and the Coalition of Communities of Color, who are working with us to continually improve the SHS to better serve all Oregon youth.

Beginning in the spring of 2019, the OHA Public Health Director’s Office began working with the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition (OPIC), the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC), and the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) to modernize Oregon’s population health surveys. These community organizations provided a deep community-centered critique of the purpose, design, and implementation of the surveys and developed a set of actionable recommendations for OHA for authentically engaging with communities through all phases of the data life cycle from design through analysis and dissemination.

Community partners worked with PDES to write comprehensive reports describing their findings and recommendations. You can learn more about this work and read the final reports here.

Data to Help Achieve Oregon’s Vision of Health Equity

We are working towards achieving health equity by obtaining data that better represents and serves all Oregon youth. The 2022 SHS reflects:

  • Input from the Youth Data Council (YDC), which was formed in early 2022 to make Oregon’s youth an integral part of the survey
  • Increasing the number of strengths-based questions that address systemic issues and reducing the number of deficits-based questions that focus on the individual
  • Enabling more contextual data by including several open-ended questions to gain a better understanding of systemic barriers and challenges faced by our youth

2022 Survey Content Developed with an Equity Focus

The 2022 Student Health Survey (SHS) is different from previous youth surveys. Community feedback supports and intensifies the need for the Oregon Public Health Division (OPHD) and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) to focus on equity. Equity is a right, not a privilege, for all Oregon Youth. Oregon Health Authority (OHA) defines health equity as “…when all people can reach their full health potential and well-being and are not disadvantaged by their race, ethnicity, language, disability, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, social class, intersections among these communities or identities, or other socially determined circumstances. Achieving health equity requires the ongoing collaboration of all regions and sectors of the state, including tribal governments to address: The equitable distribution or redistribution of resources and power and recognizing, reconciling, and rectifying historical and contemporary injustices.” 1 

Not only should OHA services be equitable but our methods for collecting and disseminating data should reflect equity as well. To be truly equitable, the Student Health Survey needs more than the revision of a few questions. It needs community and youth engagement from design through the communication of results. It needs fundamentally different and contextualized questions that meet the needs of health programs and communities. It needs structures within OPHD that support community engagement and leadership. To be fully equitable, the SHS needs OPHD to change the way that it works. This requires organizational change which can be challenging and will require sustained effort and leadership.

This summarizes the collaborative work of Program Design and Evaluation
Services (PDES)  2  with community organizations to bring more equity to the design and content of SHS and efforts to shift the way that OPHD engages community.

Community Perspective Sheds Light on the Path

OHA’s goal is to eliminate health disparities by 2030. What does that mean? Some groups of people experience persistent differences in health and health care that stem from broader systemic inequities, such as unequal distribution of social, political, economic, and environmental resources which result from racism and discrimination. Our goal is to ensure that everyone has the same opportunities to be healthy.

Beginning in the spring of 2019, the OHA Public Health Director’s Office began collaborating with the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition (OPIC), the Coalition of Communities of Color (CCC), and the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) to modernize Oregon’s population health surveys. These community organizations provided a deep community-centered critique of the purpose, design, and implementation of the surveys and developed a set of actionable recommendations for OHA for authentically engaging with communities through all phases of the data life cycle from design through analysis and dissemination.

PDES collaborated with CCC and the NPAIHB to form and facilitate community-specific data project teams for the Latinx, Black/African American/African Immigrant & Refugee, and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities. Project teams used community-identified priorities to guide the analysis, interpretation, and contextualization of student youth data. Some partners also led community-driven data collection on topics and methods of their choice.

OPIC and PDES worked together to build capacity among Pacific Islander researchers, community organizers, individuals, and community-based organizations (CBOs) to conduct community-led data collection and research. A Pacific Islander core team of researchers worked with PDES and sought guidance from various advisory groups including OPIC. The Pacific Islander-led core team identified priorities for this project, co-designed the data collection methods that would work best with their communities, and developed a community health assessment tool. They analyzed both the qualitative and quantitative data using a participatory approach 3  with a broader team of Community Research Workers.

In addition to providing key recommendations on the content of the SHS, OPIC, CCC and NPAIHB gave recommendations on including community at every step of the process of creating data from survey design through dissemination. PDES operationalized these recommendations by standing up a Youth Data Council (YDC) to give input (and ultimately collaborative decision making) into the design, content, and dissemination of the SHS. The community partners have given ongoing feedback on the formation and support of the YDC.

Community partners also met with the SHS Advisory Committee in November and December 2021 to discuss their findings and recommendations. This launched the process of modernizing the SHS.

Community partners worked with PDES to write comprehensive reports describing their findings and recommendations. You can learn more about this work and read the final reports here.

These same community organizations have been instrumental in disseminating the findings from the community-led data projects. Community partners have collaborated with PDES in presenting the findings in multiple venues including (but not limited to) the Public Health Advisory Board (PHAB) 4  and OPHD Science and Epidemiology Council.

The recommendations from the community were eye-opening.

We heard that the way many of the survey questions are asked and reported does not help and, in fact, causes harm to Oregon youth. The main criticisms of the survey are:

  • Tribal and Indigenous youth, youth of color, non-binary identifying youth, and non-heterosexual youth, have historically been under-represented, marginalized and lack visibility and a voice in the survey.
  • Survey questions do not provide communities with enough information, context and understanding of systemic barriers such as racism, and discrimination faced by Oregon youth.
  • Survey questions should focus on youth’s strength and resilience, rather than negative outcomes that reinforce blame on individuals.
  • Survey questions should focus on systems and environments in which youth make choices rather than entirely on decontextualized individual behaviors which have the effect of blaming youth rather than addressing the systemic causes.
  • The design of surveys should include youth voice and youth as decision makers in the process.
  • Survey questions do not provide enough contextual data to result in meaningfully actionable analysis.

What is Survey Modernization?

Survey Modernization simply means that we’re working to make the survey better. For everyone. We’re taking community recommendations on how to improve the survey and putting them into practice. We are working to reimagine the survey questions and capture data that is more relevant to youth’s lives to help provide the support they need to succeed.

Goals and Priorities for the 2022 SHS

Based on the recommendations from community and input of the YDC, we created an action plan for revising the SHS. Primary among our goals were to (1) revisit the purpose of the SHS to ensure that it aligns with our equity focus, (2) stand up a youth data council to provide input and guidance on the content, (3) create criteria for prioritizing survey questions and (4) make the survey more accessible by reducing the number of questions.



1 https://www.oregon.gov/oha/oei/pages/health-equity-committee.aspx
2 https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/providerpartnerresources/evaluationresearch/programdesignandevaluationservices/pages/index.aspx
3 Pankaj V. et.al. “Participatory Analysis” 2011 accessed at https://www.innonet.org/media/innovation_network-participatory_analysis.pdf on 5/13/22
4 A recording of the presentations is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEQN7kCy7rk (survey discussion starts at the 52.50 minute mark and is about 90 minutes in length).