Glossary

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Behavioral Health

Behavioral health is the study of how individuals' behaviors impact their physical and mental health

Count

DBHDS

Suppression

A count is the number of times a phenomenon occurs. Counts are an important basic measure of frequency as they can indicate trends or the sudden occurrence of a problem. However, counts do not take into account the number of residents in the geographic area and therefore cannot be compared across multiple geographic areas. In order to compare across communities, we recommend using the provided rate calculations which are standardized to account for population.

For example, on the Drug Cases tab a count of 5 under the drug category of cocaine means there were 5 cocaine-related drug cases in the given geographic area.

Community Services Board (CSB)

Community Services Boards (CSBs) are coalitions of cities or counties (or a single city or county) that are responsible for assuring the delivery of community-based behavioral health and developmental disability services to individuals with service needs. In Virginia, there are currently 40 CSBs.

The Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services. For more information about DBHDS, click here.

Epidemiology

Epidemiology is the study of health and disease at the population level. It aims to understand the causes and distributions of health outcomes in order to improve the population's overall health and control health problems.

Filter

A filter on a tab allows you to update the page to refine the information you are reviewing.

For example, each tab on the dashboard contains a geographic filter that allows you to view information for the state or narrow down and focus on a specific region, CSB, or locality.

Granular Level

Tab

Granular level is the lowest level or most detailed data in a data set. On this dashboard, the granularity of each tab is determined by the detail provided by the data source.

For example, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) provides the number of behavioral health services provided by Community Service Board (CSB). CSB is the most granular level of geographic data available, the data cannot be further broken down into locality.

Indicator

An indicator is a specific data point in a data source. We use the term "indicator" when referencing data across multiple tabs because categories across these tabs differ. In addition to year and geographic level, you can filter each tab by the indicators specific to that data source.

For example, "Narcotic Cases" is an indicator for the Juvenile Justice tab while "Binge Drinking" an indicator for the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey tab.

Locality

A locality is a city, county, or town and is used when referring to communities that are made up of counties and cities that are considered county-equivalents for the census. The Commonwealth of Virginia is made up of 95 counties and 38 independent cities that are more commonly referred to as localities.

Rate

A rate is a type of ratio that measures frequency by comparing two related quantities. On this dashboard, a rate denotes an instance of an indicator per 10,000 or 100,000 people.

For example, the Deaths tab shows that between 2009 - 2011, the state of Virginia had an overall death rate of 9.79, meaning that during that time there were 9.79 deaths for every 10,000 people in Virginia.

Region

Trend

Regions are sub-state groups of Community Service Boards (CSBs). Regions were established to ensure accurate and consistent analysis and reports across Virginia. The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) came up with two region designations, the Primary DBHDS Regions and the Developmental Services (DS) Regions. On the dashboard we mainly use the Primary DBHDS Region classification which includes five regions: Region 1, Region 2, Region 3, Region 4, and Region 5.

SEOW

State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup. For more information about the Virginia SEOW, click here.

Suppression refers to the process of withholding or removing information. Agencies may decide to suppress the number of cases to protect the confidentiality of individuals and reduce or eliminate the risk of disclosing their identity.

For example, in the Suicide tab, to protect confidentiality, information is suppressed when the number of cases is less than 10.

On this dashboard, a tab is a page specific to each data source.

For example, the webpage that visualizes the Hospitalizations data source on this dashboard would be referred to as the Hospitalization tab.

A general direction in which something is developing or changing.

For example, the rate of overdoses, by any substance in Virginia, is trending up from 2007 to 2017.