BELLEVUE, Wash. — A major national health survey being run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has landed in King County.
Mobile exam centers were set up on the Eastside in the parking lot of the Bellevue Hilton as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
On Monday, KIRO 7 got a look inside the setup for NHANES as personnel did a dry run of the process with several people coming to take part in the survey.
Caydee Wise is a graduate student of Health Science at Central Washington University. She came to the first-day setup with Tafere Belay, Assistant Professor for Health Science at CWU. Wise admitted that taking part in the survey is a first for her.
“We get to see the data but we don’t see where it’s collected,” said Wise.
The first-time participation also applied to Belay.
“I’ve been to so many data collections before but it’s not like this,” said Belay.
Both the student and professor admit the publicly available data is something they rely on for their research. Belay says the thousands of people who take part are critical for any public health analysis.
“It’s a very good data set … large sample size,” said Belay.
Wise echoed that sentiment, saying the data informs a lot of research.
“It’s important because we can look at issues nutritionally going on in the U.S. It’s fairly representative of the U.S.,” said Wise.
The CDC bills NHANES as the most comprehensive health survey of the U.S. population. This year, King County was picked among 15 other counties to participate and officials said the response has been robust.
Victor Barajas, the study manager for NHANES, spoke to KIRO 7 ahead of the full launch of the survey and said the survey will probably be close to meeting its goal for how many people will take part.
“We’ve identified over 500 participants we’re looking to examine. We want to talk to more than 350 respondents here in the county and, so far, we’re close to the 200 mark,” said Barajas.
In King County, NHANES will start the full survey on Thursday, Feb. 23, and will be here for several weeks. Barajas says anyone who’s taking part gets a full medical workup. He says getting a similar assessment on your own would probably require visiting multiple doctors.
In the CDC’s setup, the medical trailers are a one-stop shop and the assessment takes less than three hours. This effort gives the CDC an idea if there are any emerging health issues the agency should be tracking.
The CDC says everyone who takes part from the medical professionals to the survey participants will be screened for COVID-19.
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