The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program is a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. This fabulous resource not only provides maps, tables and charts (very detailed reports as well), but you’ll also find that you can access a TON of data for use in your maps, reports, data visualizations and more – it really is a gold mine of data!
county health rankings 2014
The annual County Health Rankings measure vital health factors, including high school graduation rates, obesity, smoking, unemployment, access to healthy foods, the quality of air and water, income, and teen births in nearly every county in America. The annual Rankings provide a revealing snapshot of how health is influenced by where we live, learn, work and play.
To use the resource, simply start by selectnig a state on the map. Then you can dig deeper by locating a county of interest and then start hunting for data! Detailed summary reports are available for each State (PDF) as well as the supporting data (XLS). More data resources are also provided for each State. These valuable pointers will help you locate more health data, like crates of cancer, education stats, crime stats, and other public data.
http://www.countyhealthrankings.org
You can find more information on Twitter by following @CHRankings and the #HealthRankings hashtag
See also facebook https://www.facebook.com/CountyHealthRankings
Each county is ranked within the state on how healthy people are and how long they live. They also are ranked on key factors that affect health such as: smoking, obesity, binge drinking, access to primary care providers, rates of high school graduation, rates of violent crime, air pollution levels, liquor store density, unemployment rates and number of children living in poverty.
Other studies have ranked states on health factors, but this is the first time researchers have examined the multiple factors that affect health in each county in all 50 states.
Poorly ranked counties often had multiple challenges to overcome, including:
Two- and three-fold higher rates of premature death, often from preventable conditions.
High smoking rates that lead to cancer, heart disease, bronchitis and emphysema.
High rates of obesity which can put people at risk for diabetes, disability and heart disease.
High unemployment and poverty rates.
High numbers of liquor stores and fast-food outlets but few places to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.