New City-Level Data to Help You Work Toward Better Health
Imagine a world where vacant lots blossom into gardens, where an abandoned rail line becomes a vibrant, mural-lined trail—and, perhaps most important, where more than 200 community partners, from local government to business, worked together to make it happen.
If you lived in Brownsville, Texas, you wouldn’t need to imagine it, because you’d be living it.
So how do the rest of us get there? The same way Brownsville did: by starting with local health data to pinpoint your community’s needs, then working together to change policies and, ultimately, the environment.
Today, RWJF and partners including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC Foundation are in Dallas to announce the release of city-level health data to help communities around the nation do the same.
Until now, local health data has been reported mainly at the county level, which makes it more challenging for cities—and neighborhoods within those cities, to home in on their unique challenges and opportunities. With the 500 Cities Project, cities will be able to dig down to the census-tract level for the prevalence of costly, preventable chronic diseases like obesity and unhealthy behaviors like smoking—along with data on prevention practices. Covering cities ranging in population from 42,000 to over 8 million, this trove of data includes one-third of the U.S. population.
By the spring, users will be able to use an interactive website to filter the data by city, census tract or health measure, from Miami to Spokane, Washington, which—like Brownsville—has won a Culture of Health Prize for its turnaround.
At the heart of that effort is Priority Spokane, a cross-sector partnership launched in 2009 after a health department report linked the lack of education to poor health, not to mention poverty. Residents and leaders agreed to target graduation rates, which have climbed from less than 60 percent in 2006 to nearly 80 percent in 2013. And not only that: A program to train youth advocates resulted in successful pushes to tear down a drug house, limit junk food ads and maintain library hours.
Efforts like these are so powerful precisely because they’re driven by the community, where the needs are most clear, and where change is truly felt. And the first step is giving people the tools they need to take informed steps to better health – that’s where 500 Cities comes in. We look forward to seeing this data spark the kind of big ideas and collaboration that will create healthier places to live, learn, work and play in your community, and across the nation.
Principal, NHSmith Consulting
8 年So needed!!!
Basic Health Access
8 年One problem with emphasis on data is that the focus becomes the data - as in 300 million dollars spent over 10 years. Where is the utility in data that demonstrates 2621 counties with 40% of the US and higher concentrations of deficits with lower social, behavioral, environmental and other determinants of health? We used to have allies doing community health planners, public health personnel, extension agents, local social workers, and other voluntary, foundation, and government supports - slashed 1980s to the present. We used to focus on focus on COPC, parish nurses, lay nurses, and other outreach - often by those preparing for health careers. Now few hear about such efforts or "rediscover" the same concepts. We used to have community hospitals helping to organize local care and facilitate jobs, economics, and cash flow - but 800 are gone with 1 - 2 more dying a month and without considering where hospitals, emergency rooms, and workforce are needed. Top down approaches appear to have failed because they were not connected well to people in need of care as seen in DRG/PPS to ACA/MACRA. The Public Health Service used to have eyes and ears in the field and there were community planners. Our designs for health care have divorced us from the awareness needed to really make a difference - resulting in even more spent for even less result. Dad needs a helmet in the picture and the helmets need to fit better.
Strategic Business Development Specialist
8 年It has been a long-time coming... However, the results will be worth it for the community. I look forward to reading future articles. Thank you for sharing.
Professor at Temple University
8 年This resonates with a project I have been working on for the DeBeaumont Foundation to use policy surveillance to track adoption of healthy laws and policies in the 40 largest cities in the US, https://www.cityhealth.org/. Combining policy surveillance data and this new resource has great potential for better and faster evaluation of impact and diffusion of successful innovation.
Contracted Spatial Health Analyst
8 年RWJF has a number of great grant opportunities for development of spatial models for communities. In healthcare, it is difficult to get healthcare facilities to get engaged. I work of genomic and epigenomic projects and attempt to pull clinicians and facilities into this population health neighborhood focused approach to health care. However, a limiter to RWJF's grants is that RWJF doesn't score central, administrative managed and operated programs development that well. My work on an entire city region cannot find the grants needed, even though at the much smaller community level, small agencies can find this support. This is at least for multicultural urban setting where I work on 6.5M patients spatial analysis and the development of more targeted managed care intervention programs.