We provide a variety of ways of exploring, comparing, and visualizing the Rankings and all of the underlying data. Enter the name of a county into the Search box to go directly to a county snapshot. In each county snapshot, you can see the county’s ranks for Health Outcomes and Health Factors. And, for each measure, you can see the county’s value, its error margins (if applicable), the State average, and the National Benchmark.
National Benchmarks
For many Rankings measures, we have calculated a National Benchmark for 2013. This is NOT a national average--it is the point at which only 10% of counties in the nation do better, i.e., the 90th percentile or 10th percentile, depending on whether the measure is framed positively (e.g., high school graduation) or negatively (e.g., adult smoking). A list of the 2013 National Benchmarks is available. (Some measures are not comparable across states--the national benchmark will not apply in these cases. Information on comparability of measures across states is available.)
Trends
This year we are including trend graphs for eight measures (click on the graph in the Trend column of your county's snapshot). Most of the charts are based on mulitple-year rolling averages for the county, state and nation. For exampe, a three-year rolling average for 2008 is based on data from 2007-2009, the data point for 2009 is based on data from 2008-2010, etc.
Areas to Explore
Areas to Explore highlight potential challenges your community may want to examine more closely. Accounting for the relative influence of each measure on health outcomes, we used a variety of techniques to identify the Health Factor measures for your county that seem to have the greatest potential opportunity for improvement. We identified measures where there are meaningful differences between your county’s values and either your state average, the national benchmark, or the state average in the best state. These Areas to Explore are just one starting point for you to consider in your journey toward improving health in your community.
Data and Measures
If you click on a measure's name in a county snapshot, you can see more information about that measure:
- a summary of the measure, the years on which it is based, how the measure is incorporated into the Rankings, and overall statistics
- a map showing the counties in the state split into four equal-sized quartiles based on each county’s values,
- the data values for all counties in the state: you can see the actual values for each county in the state along with Z-scores and error margins (95% confidence intervals). To find the county with the best or worst value for that measure, you click on the arrows in the Z-score column header to sort the counties from best to worst (or worst to best).
- a description of why we include this measure in the Rankings and its strengths and limitations
- the data source and
- policies and programs that are potential strategies addressing the focus area the measure represents.
Compare Counties
You can compare ranks and measures for multiple counties within a state.
Download (Data Files, State Summary Reports, and Maps)
You can download all of the data used to compute summary scores and ranks in spreadsheet format, as well as data for unranked counties. The national and state files include every measure that we use, composite summary scores, and detailed descriptions of data sources and collection years.
You can print snapshots for a single county, a selection of snapshots from several counties, or snapshots for all counties in your state. Once you have selected snapshots to print, you can use your browser’s printing capabilities to print the snapshot(s). If you have PDF save capabilities, you can also use this feature to create PDFs of your snapshots.
Share
Share a County Health Rankings snapshot for your county on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or via email.