How healthy are we?  This month’s Regional Snapshot explores recently released public health data for the metro area to help answer this question.

Datasets analyzed include:

  • County Health Rankings: A collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 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 inequality, 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.
  • OASIS: A suite of interactive tools used to access the Georgia Department of Public Health’s standardized health data repository. OASIS and the Repository are designed, built and maintained by the Office of Health Indicators for Planning (OHIP). OASIS is currently populated with Vital Statistics (births, deaths, fetal deaths, induced terminations, pregnancies),  Hospital Discharge, Emergency Room Visit, Arboviral Surveillance, Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), STD, Motor Vehicle Crash, and Population data.
  • 500 Cities Project: The 500 Cities Project is a collaboration between CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation. The purpose of the 500 Cities Project is to provide city- and census tract-level small area estimates for chronic disease risk factors, health outcomes, and clinical preventive service use for the largest 500 cities in the United States. These small area estimates will allow cities and local health departments to better understand the burden and geographic distribution of health-related variables in their jurisdictions, and assist them in planning public health interventions.

*This week it was announced that Neighborhood Nexus has been selected by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as a 500 Cities Data Challenge Grantee. Stay tuned for a forthcoming Regional Snapshot (scheduled for this fall), detailing our 500 Cities project work. 

Highlights from this snapshot:

  • The latest County Health Rankings show that health is generally improving across metro Atlanta, but again, there are some notable exceptions in mostly the same places as in previous rankings.
  • Based on Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL) before the age of 75, overall public health is improving slightly, but that is not true everywhere. In fact, some counties have seen dramatic increases in premature deaths.
  • Overall public health is improving, most notably in cardiovascular diseases. But diabetes is a troubling outlier in the general improvement of public health in the Atlanta area.
  • Place matters. The spatial patterns are clear – areas with lower incomes typically have poorer health outcomes.
  • Race Matters. The racial patterns are clear, as well – Blacks generally have poorer health outcomes than Whites. This is particularly true in the case of diabetes.
  • Drug overdoses in general, and prescription opioid overdoses specifically, continue to rise.

Click through the slides below or download the PDF Regional Snapshot: Public Health in Metro Atlanta.