Clark County Public Health gets OK to add question about racism and discrimination to annual statewide survey

The Clark County Council approved a request from Clark County Public Health last week to add a question about residents’ experience with racism and discrimination to an annual statewide survey.

About 500 Clark County residents are chosen annually to participate in the 25-minute phone survey, which is completely voluntary and confidential and administered through the Washington State Department of Health, said Andrea Pruett, community health director for Clark County Public Health.

Residents are randomly selected from a pool of both listed and unlisted phone numbers across the state. Each household in the state has a chance of being chosen.

Questions are on topics ranging from health care access to substance use, mental health, immunization, chronic disease, cancer screenings and injuries.

Locally, the data has been used to track health outcomes and identify gaps in the community, said Adiba Ali, an epidemiologist with Clark County Public Health. Clark County Public Health has also used it to create tools and resources such as a 2023 community health assessment and improvement plan, a social determinants of health story map and interactive community health status maps.

Clark County Public Health requested $550 to add a county-specific question asking residents how often they’ve been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity in the last 12 months.

The survey data will be used to assess the link between experiences of racism and chronic disease and behavioral health, inform strategic planning and help identify priority populations to focus program efforts, improve health care utilization and reduce health gaps with different races and ethnicities, according to documents submitted to the county council.

Clark County Public Health will also disseminate the data to community partners and key decision makers to improve awareness of racism in the county. Organizations utilizing this data will include the Fourth Plain Coalition, Council for the Homeless, League of United Latin American Citizens, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Pacific Islander Community Association.

In asking about the survey question, Councilor Glen Yung raised a concern about how residents may interpret the question.

“Sometimes you can feel that you’ve been unfairly treated, but it may not be because of race,” Yung said. “I’m wondering how do you address that? Because the question kind of it feels like it kind of pins people into confirming for sure whether or not it was racism that they experienced.”

Pruett said the survey asks for supplemental information including details of the participant’s experience with racism or discrimination, adding that there are limitations with the data.

“We collect the data, we interpret the data and it goes towards a larger body of evidence that we use to try to paint the bigger picture of what we are seeing and hearing,” Pruett said.

In June 2020, the Clark County Board of Health passed a resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis in the community.

At the time, the resolution received pushback from then-Councilor Gary Medvigy and then-Chair Eileen Quiring O’Brien, who said she did not believe systemic racism exists in Clark County.

The resolution, both symbolic and practical, formally acknowledges that systemic racism creates health disparities and inequities for people of color and charges Clark County Public Health to recommend policy change and improvements.