The Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Human Needs, together with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, have made available the County Health Calculator, an online simulation tool that shows how many lives would be saved if a county, state or the nation had the health benefits that exist in areas with higher levels of college education or income.
Recent Posts
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have published County Health Rankings for nearly every county in the U.S. The rankings measure health based upon multiple factors, from graduation rates to obesity.
Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap project provides estimates of food insecurity at the County level combining various data sources to create a better understanding of the amount of food insecurity at the local level by income category and the food budget shortfall of individuals who are food insecure.
report from the National Research Council weighs in on factors contributing to the slower pace of improvements in longevity among men and women in the U.S. compared to other high-income countries.
The newly released report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at health disparities in social determinants of health, environmental hazards, health care access and health outcomes.
A new report on veteran homelessness by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides data on the extent and nature of homelessness among veterans in the United States.
The newly released report Worse Case Housing Needs 2009 finds a steep increase in housing-related hardships from 2007 to 2009. During this period the number of renters experiencing worst case needs jumped by more than 20%, from 5.9 million to 7.1 million.
USDA’s Your Food Environment Atlas is a web-based mapping tool that allows users to compare U.S. counties in terms of their “food environment” – factors such as proximity to grocery stores and restaurants, food expenditures, food insecurity, food assistance, food prices, health, physical activity, and socio-economic characteristics.
State of Homelessness in America analyzes annual “point-in-time” homelessness counts which take place in January of each year. The 2009 count found that 656,129 people were homeless –or 21 people per 10,000 people in the general population.
The most recent year for which data are available (2010) shows the highest number of participants in the Food Stamp (now called SNAP) program’s history, at 40.3 million participants on average per month. The average monthly number of SNAP participants has grown by 234% since 2000. http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/SNAPsummary.htm