Source: Health Policy Institute of Ohio
A new web-based interactive tool released March 1 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will let anyone find and search health data at the neighborhood level for 500 U.S. cities that include Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati (Source: “CDC Releases Interactive Neighborhood-Level Health Data for 500 Cities, Including Cleveland,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 2, 2017).
The 500 cities project, a collaboration between the CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation, is part of a nationwide effort to provide this health information for geographic areas smaller than counties. The effort began in 2015 and includes city and census tract-level estimates for 27 chronic health conditions, behaviors, risk factors, and preventive service use for the largest 500 cities in the United States.
“Measures of health outcomes are generally gathered at the state and county level,” said Oktawia Wojcik, a research-evaluation-learning unit program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, speaking to reporters about the project. “This really masks important differences among geographic areas that are smaller than counties, making it difficult to identify health disparities and target interventions.”