Population Level Analysis and Community Estimates
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded its 500 Cities Project, a 2016 initiative to provide city- and neighborhood-level health estimates for a large portion of the nation’s population. The project is being renamed PLACES, and provides Population Level Analysis and Community Estimates to the entire United States to show the prevalence of chronic diseases and the health impacts on underserved communities. PLACES provides data estimates for 27 health measures for four U.S. geographic levels: counties, incorporated and census-designated places, census tracts, and ZIP codes. The chronic disease measures focus on health outcomes, unhealthy behaviors, and prevention practices that have a substantial impact on people’s health. The CDC says PLACES can be used to:
- Inform target prevention activities, programs, and policies;
- Identify emerging health problems and priority health risk behaviors;
- Identify and understand geographic health-related issues;
- Establish key health goals; and
- Identify geographic disparities in health among and within communities to inform strategies that address health equity.
To track the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, the COVID-19 Tracking projected partnered with the Antiracist Research & Policy Center to create theCOVID Racial data tracker.
The Washington Post mapped the percentage of individuals with high-risk health conditions relative to the nation’s average for each census tract, along with data on racial demographics, household overcrowding, health insurance coverage and the CDC’s social vulnerability index. The map includes every census tract in the country.
The data allowed investigative data reporter Aaron Williams and graphics reporter Adrian Blanco to conclude that a majority of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Washington, D.C. are “in some of the city’s densest neighborhoods, which have large majority-minority populations as well as high rates of chronic health conditions,” they told the Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg. The findings highlight long-standing health disparities which have left disadvantaged communities far more vulnerable during the pandemic.
There is growing concern about racial and ethnic disparities in the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the Solutions Journalism Network, which helps journalists use data in finding and reporting evidence-based solutions stories, assembled a database of state and local governments that are reporting cases and deaths disaggregated by race and ethnicity, with links to the data. Journalists can use the numbers to highlight disparities in their region and compared it other the situation to other parts of the country.
See the state-by-state data set here.
And here is the story.