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Editorial: Growing problem

Powell River is too fat. This is one of the findings of a recent My Health My Community (MHMC) survey. There is a big but attached to this little tidbit of information and it is not the one to be sat upon.

Powell River is too fat.

This is one of the findings of a recent My Health My Community (MHMC) survey.

There is a big but attached to this little tidbit of information and it is not the one to be sat upon. The problem with this statement is that it is based on bad data.

Clearly a lot of work went into collecting this data and avoiding discrepancies in data collection—the iPad prizes offered to participants clearly has one over on the census—but the data itself is about as useful to health policy as a full bed pan.

Rather than being crunched from data out of the 2011 long-form census, this finding was squeezed from a unrepresentative survey collected by regional health authorities.

While a Liberal Party member of parliament is trying to bring back the long-form census in a private members’ bill, the days of the long-form census seem a long way away and policymakers are clearly floundering to fill in the data gap left by its absence.

Intended to help “local governments, health-care decision-makers, academia and community stakeholders tackle health inequalities” the MHMC itself represents an inequality.

While some might argue that a little data is better than no data at all, bad data can do more harm than good—particularly when it comes to Powell River and its supposed obesity problem.

Although the MHMC is weighted for gender against the 2011 long-form census, it is no replacement for the now abolished compulsory questionnaire because it is non-compulsory and cannot guarantee representativeness.

Case in point, although MHMC collected over 100 per cent of the four per cent target in Sechelt, in Powell River it only gathered 39 per cent of the same target.

Such differential data would never be weighted equally by Statistics Canada, yet in the MHMC it is.

For example, in an MHMC infographic comparing body mass index data between respondent communities it has Powell River rating most obese, Bowen Island midway down and Whistler as the least obese.

If living in a post-long-form census nation means more problematic surveys like the MHMC bad data is not all there is to worry about—bad policy is sure to follow.