The Massachusetts Department of Public Health has launched its 2026 Community Health Equity Survey. The study relies on resident feedback to learn what is impacting health outcomes across the Commonwealth. Factors range from education and employment to housing and transportation. This year's survey is aimed at communities "disproportionately impacted by structural racism."
Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes spoke with Mass. DPH Deputy Director Ta-wei Lin, who says the Commonwealth wants to learn how federal immigration policies have affected residents.
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Lin: We try our best to identify the issues that residents care the most about at that particular time. So, in 2020, very COVID-focused.
This cycle, we've spent a lot of time with many community-serving organizations that provide immigration related services or work with folks that are dealing with immigration issues, and really trying to listen to what it is that they want to share, and working internally about what it is that we need.
There obviously is a major gap in information about how people are being impacted, and in particular, what its impact is on mental health outcomes. I think, regardless of your immigration status, regardless of you know the identities that you hold, I think the impact of federal immigration policies and the enforcement of those policies have had anecdotally, a dramatic impact on my family and my friends, people that I care deeply about, my neighbors.
But we didn't really have a lot of data to be able to point specifically here in Massachusetts on what exactly those impacts are. So, this survey, one of the goals for this cycle is to really understand that.
There are questions that we worked very closely with our community partners to craft - questions that get at the experiences that people have had related to this.
We do not ask about immigration status. We do not ask about anything that people might be uncomfortable asking, and so we were quite careful, and worked quite closely with our community partners to make sure we were asking the right questions, but also wanting to give people an opportunity to share their stories and their voice. That is one of the priorities for this survey, and definitely one of the things that we are most excited for - to get some actual data that we can help to connect and really elevate. I think the connection between mental health and immigration.
Landes: I'm speaking to you from Western Massachusetts, a part of Massachusetts far from Boston and its densely populated metropolitan hub. There are perpetual ongoing regional equity issues in this more rural, largely poorer and less resourced part of the Commonwealth. Can you speak to the Western Mass. of it all? How will this survey account for regional disparities in the Commonwealth?
Lin: The way in which our survey is sampled - we set these sample goals by our communities of focus as well as regional sample goals.
Many of our rural residents and partners are unfortunately very underrepresented, or in invisible in many of our existing data sets that we have here at the department.
A lot of that is not necessarily an intentional decision, and there are data challenges related to collecting information in some of the more traditional methods to account for some more of our rural communities.
I think with this survey, it does present an opportunity to make sure that those rural stories and voices are amplified. And the way that we do that is we work very closely with regional coalitions and partners.
The Public Health Institute of Western Mass. is one of our very close partners. They are helping us to identify regional coalitions, regional partners, municipality groups to help to advertise the survey and emphasize the importance of sharing and gathering rural data.
This survey in 2023 was one of the largest statewide survey efforts to actually gather information from rural residents. We hope to continue that trend and actually amplify some of those. In addition to just regional data, our hope actually is to also be able to offer a municipal lens as well. If we are able to gather enough information at the municipal level, many of our residents and partners can request data from us, and hopefully, we'll have enough responses to be able to provide them with the information that they need related to the health topic that they care about.
