Imagine a world where vacant lots blossom into gardens, where an abandoned rail line becomes a vibrant, mural-lined trail—and, perhaps most important, where more than 200 community partners, from local government to business, worked together to make it happen.
If you lived in Brownsville, Texas, you wouldn’t need to imagine it, because you’d be living it.
So how do the rest of us get there? The same way Brownsville did: by starting with local health data to pinpoint your community’s needs, then working together to change policies and, ultimately, the environment.
Today, RWJF and partners including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC Foundation are in Dallas to announce the release of city-level health data to help communities around the nation do the same.
Until now, local health data has been reported mainly at the county level, which makes it more challenging for cities—and neighborhoods within those cities, to home in on their unique challenges and opportunities. With the 500 Cities Project, cities will be able to dig down to the census-tract level for the prevalence of costly, preventable chronic diseases like obesity and unhealthy behaviors like smoking—along with data on prevention practices. Covering cities ranging in population from 42,000 to over 8 million, this trove of data includes one-third of the U.S. population.
[For more of this story, written by Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, go to https://www.linkedin.com/pulse...-risa-lavizzo-mourey]
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