The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is one component of the Hawai‘i School Health Survey and is administered in odd-numbered years to public school students in grades six through twelve. The YRBS is part of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System developed by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with representatives from state and local departments of education and health, other federal agencies, and national education and health organizations. CRDG’s Susan Saka has been administering the YRBS to public school students in middle and high schools since 1993, gathering data on a variety of CDC-developed questions as well as on topics of local interest. The data then drive a host of health related programs both here in Hawai‘i and nationally. At the state level, the data help in the tracking of key indicators of health and well-being among youth and inform programs across the Hawai‘i Department of Health in the Family Health Services Division, Emergency Medical Services & Injury Prevention Division, Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Division, and Healthy Hawai‘i Initiative for monitoring, program planning, and evaluation. For the general public, websites like the Hawai‘i Health Data Warehouse (http://www.hhdw.org/), Hawai‘i Health Matters (http://www.hawaiihealthmatters.org/index.php), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/yrbs/index.htm) provide a wealth of data about health trends and goals in our community and our nation. With CRDG’s tenth administration of the YRBS in Hawai‘i’s public schools in 2011, Hawai‘i now has nearly twenty years of data on adolescents’ behavior related to their health and well-being.
Curriculum Research & Development Group
University of Hawaii at Manoa: College of Education