500 Cities: Local Data for Better Health

Keywords

grouping, ordering, limiting, horizontal, sort, list, group, tags

Overview

Learning about the local health of your favorite city has never been easier. With help from data released by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plus visualization and querying tools in ATSD, spotting your city's place in the rankings is not just for your health, but vital to informing your company's next health-related venture or enhancing the already existing knowledge of your staff with such valuable public data.

The 500 Cities Project uses self-reporting and census-style data-gathering methodology to engage in the country-wide conversation about public health using small-area samples from the 500 largest cities in the nation. That means cities like Los Angeles and New York are broken up into smaller segments to give a better picture of the public health indicators of any given location. The information is then presented in a straightforward and easy to understand format that simply shows the percent of respondents who answered in the affirmative to a particular question, creating simple solutions for sometimes complex data problems.

Which US city really is the healthiest? Well if you ask them, almost 20% of Youngstown, Ohio residents responded positively when asked in they are in good health.

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SELECT TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, LAST (VALUE)
  FROM  phlth_crudeprev
GROUP BY TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, VALUE
  ORDER BY VALUE DESC
LIMIT 25
tags.placename tags.stateabbr last(VALUE)
Youngstown OH 19.8
Gary IN 19.5
Reading PA 19.1
Flint MI 18.7
Cleveland OH 18.6
Camden NJ 18.6
Detroit MI 18.5
New Bedford MA 18.3
Macon GA 18.3
Lynwood CA 18.3
Birmingham AL 18.3
Hialeah FL 18.0
Fall River MA 18.0
Compton CA 17.9
San Bernardino CA 17.9
Hemet CA 17.9
Dayton OH 17.7
Springfield MA 17.7
Lawrence MA 17.7
Fort Smith AR 17.3
South Gate CA 17.3
Passaic NJ 17.1
Brownsville TX 17.0
Miami FL 16.9
Albany GA 16.9

What about the least physically healthy cities?

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SELECT TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, LAST (VALUE)
  FROM  phlth_crudeprev
GROUP BY TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, VALUE
  ORDER BY VALUE ASC
LIMIT 25
tags.placename tags.stateabbr last(VALUE)
Plymouth MN 6.8
Frisco TX 6.9
Fishers IN 7.1
College Station TX 7.3
Overland Park KS 7.5
Cambridge MA 7.5
San Ramon CA 7.5
Fargo ND 7.5
Allen TX 7.6
Boulder CO 7.6
Carmel IN 7.7
Ann Arbor MI 7.7
Johns Creek GA 7.7
Iowa City IA 7.8
Naperville IL 7.8
Irvine CA 7.8
Sugar Land TX 7.9
Newton MA 7.9
Alexandria VA 8.0
Olathe KS 8.0
League City TX 8.0
Mountain View CA 8.0
Rochester MN 8.1
Lawrence KS 8.1
Cary NC 8.1

Of course, physical health is only half of the total picture; mental health is another important metric for gauging overall public health, which city has the most stable demeanor, and perhaps more interestingly, what city considers itself to have the lowest level of mental health?

View in ChartLab

SELECT TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, LAST (VALUE)
  FROM mhlth_crudeprev
GROUP BY TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, VALUE
  ORDER BY VALUE DESC
LIMIT 25
tags.placename tags.stateabbr last(VALUE)
Reading PA 18.4
New Bedford MA 18.2
Fall River MA 18.1
Camden NJ 17.7
Flint MI 17.6
Youngstown OH 17.4
Springfield MA 17.4
Cleveland OH 17.3
Detroit MI 17.2
Dayton OH 17.1
Gary IN 17.0
Lynwood CA 17.0
Birmingham AL 17.0
Lawrence MA 16.9
Brockton MA 16.7
San Bernardino CA 16.7
Macon GA 16.6
Compton CA 16.5
Canton OH 16.4
Memphis TN 16.4
Trenton NJ 16.4
Albany GA 16.3
Tuscaloosa AL 16.3
Hartford CT 16.2
Muncie IN 16.1

And it would not be any fun with the bottom twenty-five as well, included below:

View in ChartLab

SELECT TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, LAST (VALUE)
  FROM mhlth_crudeprev
GROUP BY TAGS.placename, TAGS.stateabbr, VALUE
  ORDER BY VALUE ASC
LIMIT 25
tags.placename tags.stateabbr last(VALUE)
Plymouth MN 7.2
Sugar Land TX 7.3
Overland Park KS 7.5
Frisco TX 7.8
Centennial CO 7.9
Bellevue WA 7.9
Naperville IL 8.0
San Ramon CA 8.0
Bloomington MN 8.1
Plano TX 8.1
Allen TX 8.2
Johns Creek GA 8.2
Sunnyvale CA 8.3
Fargo ND 8.3
Arlington Heights IL 8.4
Rochester MN 8.4
Carmel IN 8.4
Richardson TX 8.4
Pearland TX 8.5
Newport Beach CA 8.5
League City TX 8.6
Mountain View CA 8.6
Fremont CA 8.6
Alexandria VA 8.7
Olathe KS 8.7

The CDC has included over a dozen such metrics, ranging from diabetes to dental health, and asthma to arthritis. Open ChartLab with the button below any of the charts show above and navigate the rest of this analytical gold mine yourself to find your favorite (or least favorite) city using the drop-down list at the top of the display to select the city and metric.