New Citywide Health Survey Will Help Guide Cleveland's Programs and Policies

The Cleveland Department of Health is co-running the first Cleveland Health Survey in nine years. Credit: Mark Oprea

It’s likely that Cleveland’s knowledge of its residents’ personal health is outdated.

That’s the premise underlying this year’s Cleveland Health Survey, a city-wide questionnaire of all things medical spearheaded by doctors at Case Western Reserve University and officials in the Cleveland Department of Public Health.

The survey, which has attracted 944 responses since it was released in November, is meant to replace old data from the last time such a detailed examination of Clevelanders was undertaken—back in 2015.

Dave Margolius, the head of the CDPH, told Scene that he expects his department to source the health stats and demographics of an anticipated 1,326 people, which will provide detailed information as opposed to incomplete and vague data from hospitals and coroner reports.

“This is how health departments measure health—you can’t improve what you’re not measuring,” CDPH head Dave Margolius told Scene. “In order for us to make Cleveland the healthiest place we can be, we’ve gotta know what the direct drivers [of good health] are.”

And, from a city level, how to fund the right programs. And where.

“This information is intended to guide the development and tailoring of programs,” the survey’s website says, “policies and resources to better serve the health needs of the community.”

As Cleveland awaits the effects of a new federal administration in 2025, its government has a heap of public health matters to prioritize and decisions on how to fund them, whether with tax dollars or grants from Washington.

Dave Margolius, Cleveland’s head of the Department of Public Health who’s made the fight against tobacco one of his main priorities, is spearheading the survey on the city side of things. Credit: Mark Oprea

That is to say, anything from air quality issues in Ohio City to tobacco vape sales, bike lanes to lead abatement. And, even more topically, how medical procedures are funded, or how people get healthcare in the first place. (Express Care? Primary physician?)

Funded completely by Case Western and a consortium of healthcare entities, like United Way and Mount Sinai, the questionnaire aims to get the health profile of adult Clevelanders in each of the city’s 34 neighborhoods.

The survey took Scene roughly 15 minutes to complete. Questions range from identity to drug use and neighborhood safety: What’s your sexual orientation? Do you have diabetes? Do you have money for groceries? Have you ever used fentanyl or cocaine?

What is different from the 2015 survey — which, like this year’s, localizes a national survey from the Center for Disease Control — is a heavier emphasis on mental health. And tying it much closer to race and gender.

“Within the past 30 days, have you experienced any physical symptoms, for example, a headache, an upset stomach, tensing of your muscles, or a pounding heart,” the survey reads, “as a result of how you were treated based on your race or ethnicity?”

Which Margolius said is all the more pertinent to ask.

“That is unfortunately what it is the consequence of decades of policies that unfortunately harm Black people,” he said, “relative to white people.”

Interested Clevelanders have until the end of December to take the survey, which can be done over the phone or online, in English or Spanish. Survey takers are automatically entered into a chance to win $50.