According to a Jan. 25 news release, researchers at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, announced the launch of the Congressional District Health Dashboard (CDHD). The CDHD is an online tool that offers health data for all 435 congressional districts and the District of Columbia.
The news release says that “The dashboard incorporates 36 key measures of health, such as deaths from cardiovascular disease and breast cancer, along with conditions that affect health, like housing affordability and access to nutritious foods. Until now, most of these data were not available at the congressional district level, nor were they compiled in a single location or easily available to the public.”
Further, “The Congressional District Health Dashboard’s data reveal stark geographic and racial and ethnic differences in health and wellbeing across congressional districts in the United States. For example, people living in congressional districts in the 11 states that have not expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act are twice as likely to be uninsured compared to those in states with expanded Medicaid coverage. In fact, residents of congressional districts in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas on average are almost 3.5 times more likely to be uninsured than those in congressional districts in New England. On average, Hispanic residents have the highest rates of uninsurance in most congressional districts across the country.”
The CDHC offers abilities, including:
- Access to nonpartisan data on health, education, and poverty by congressional district and the ability to compare findings to state and national averages
- Comparing racial and ethnic metrics within districts
- Viewing of congressional districts’ snapshots with the 36 measures compared to the national average
The news release adds that “The dashboard’s analysis of the congressional district data also reveals the following findings:
- Across congressional districts, there is large variation in several health outcomes including people reporting mental distress which ranges from 9 to 21 percent by district.
- Rent burden is lowest in rural districts at 37 percent, and highest in districts along the coastal regions (California, the Northeast, and Florida) and urban congressional districts generally, at 50 percent.
- Across the United States, deaths from cardiovascular disease are lower in suburban districts at 194 deaths per 100,000, compared to urban and rural districts at 215 and 225 deaths per 100,000, respectively.
- Child poverty is lower in suburban districts at about 14 percent, and higher in urban and rural districts at 19 percent.
- Broadband access is significantly lower in rural southern districts, where only 40 to 50 percent of households have high-speed internet compared to 80 to 90 percent in urban districts with strong broadband access.
- Racial and ethnic disparities in low birth weight are observed across districts, with particularly stark disparities in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In more than three-quarters of the districts in these states, Black newborns are roughly twice as likely to be underweight at birth than White babies (with other racial and ethnic groups falling between), including all of South Carolina’s districts and five of Louisiana’s six districts.”
The CDHC is updated regularly by population health and policy experts, epidemiologists, and geospatial specialists. The CDHC displays measures and drivers of health through interactive maps, tables, and charts. The data are drawn from federal sources and other datasets and are held to rigorous standards of data collection and analysis—including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
This tool is the first of its kind and the CDHC aims to equip congressional staff, federal and state advocates, journalists, and researchers with data on health and conditions to drive change in the U.S. healthcare system.
