How healthy we are and how long we live is not just the result of our genes and our biology, but also a direct result of the health choices we make, the place where we live, the health care we receive, and policies and laws that affect our opportunities and choices. Among the social factors that contribute to health, the most important predictors are education and income. Explore these pages to see the connection between these factors and the health of the people in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016
People often assume that genetics and healthcare are the most important factors in health. Other factors can have a significant impact too, such as socioeconomic status, health behavior, and environment. Roll over the bars on this chart to see how each category affects overall health. Learn more about each category in the sections below.
Source: Tarlov, A.R., Public Policy Frameworks for Improving Population Health. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1999.
These indicators show at a glance how we are doing as a community in regards to health. In general, residents of Cleveland have poorer health outcomes than residents of greater Cuyahoga County. For some indicators, Cleveland does worse than the national average by 20% or more. Explore the sections below to see underlying reasons for the poor health of people in our community. View sources for this section.
Since many chronic illnesses (such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension) can be prevented, a number of community efforts are underway to make Cuyahoga County and Cleveland a healthier place. Take a look at Health Action pages to see some of these initiatives. Visit Check Your Health Risk to see if there are ways you can reduce your own risk for these conditions.
Individual behaviors contribute a great deal to how long we live and how healthy we are. While it is easy to talk about making positive changes in health behaviors, there are things we can do together to make it easier for people to develop and maintain healthy habits. View sources for this section.
One of the most important goals of public health is to make the healthy decision the easy—or default—decision. If your neighborhood has no grocery stores selling fresh produce, the default decision may become eating unhealthy foods. Poorer communities often lack access to fresh food, and face other environmental factors that make being healthy much more difficult to achieve. Explore some of the environmental factors affecting healthy choices below, and see what people are already doing to make our community healthier by visiting the Health Action page.
Cuyahoga County and Cleveland are shaped by both urbanization and urban sprawl. Both create conditions that influence our health. Heavily urban areas concentrate assets and solutions, but also feature overcrowding, high volume traffic, poor air quality, and lack of safe public spaces. As a result, urban areas tend to have more chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer; more violence and injuries; and more infectious diseases. On the other hand, urban sprawl results in an over-reliance on automobiles, increasing pedestrian death and injury, motor vehicle accidents, high blood pressure, heat waves, and air pollution. Many initiatives are already underway to shape these urban and suburban communities and make them healthier and more sustainable. View sources for this section.
Residents of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County who live in poverty are at especially high risk for poor health. “Health disparities” are differences in health among various population groups. Lack of access to healthy food poor living conditions, older housing and poor air quality contribute to health disparities.
Cuyahoga County and Cleveland are home to some of the most glaring health disparities in the United States. For example, there is a 24-year difference in the average life span of people living in neighborhoods just a few miles apart. In Cuyahoga County in 2016, 15.5 Black infants died per 1,000 live births, more than three times the rate of 5.1 among Whites. View sources for this section.
*With health reform, insurance has become more accessible. Hospitals are seeing more insured patients today than in 2010.
Poverty line in 2014 was $23,850 for a family of 4. 100%-200% PL: $23,850-$47,700. 400% PL: $95,400
Cuyahoga and Cleveland are at high risk for poor health due to elevated levels of poverty. Many families are vulnerable. Poorer nutrition and living conditions, for instance older housing and polluted air, cause many health conditions, including asthma.
Cleveland has excellent healthcare systems, yet many people die or are disabled from conditions that could have been prevented or treated. There are several important measures of a strong healthcare system, including: access to primary care, management of chronic disease, access to preventive care (such as immunization), and preventive tests. Current healthcare reform is increasing access to primary and preventive care. By changing the way we pay for health care, we hope to achieve the “Triple Aim”—better care, better health outcomes and lower cost. View sources for this section.
* Early diagnosis dramatically improves chance of survival.
Healthcare Access by Race
On January 31, 2021, Cleveland & Cuyahoga Health Data Matters (HDM) will terminate as a website. Going forward, visitors will be redirected to HealthyNeo.org.
1) When HDM was established in 2015, it was the only site available for comprehensive data on health and social determinants of health of the local population, with breakdowns available for disparity groups of interest and that could be examined at the zip code or census tract level. At this point, there are many sites across the country with some data like this.
2) The Healthy Northeast Ohio website (www.healthyneo.org) was launched in December 2019, as a neutral data repository for community health. Going forward, HDM will redirect to Healthy Northeast Ohio. Healthy Northeast Ohio aims to work with HDM data contributors to explore adding data to the site.
3) I am leaving the University at the end of January. While Scott Frank has been a full and equal partner since shortly after HDM was established, he agrees that transitioning to HealthyNeo.org is the best use of available resources.
We provided a single place where definitive and current data from all of the local health departments could be housed. This saved resources that health departments otherwise used to satisfy public requests for data.
An early champion of health data visualization, we were among the very first, through our partnership with LiveStories, to enable people to create maps and interactive charts without having to have or learn to use GIS and mapping software.
Anticipating widespread interest in social determinants of health, we made it possible to see the relationship of these determinants to health outcomes, thanks to the rich poverty data provided by NEOCANDO at the Mandel School.
Anticipating widespread interest in health disparities, we also provided data for subpopulations of interest, such as by race, education or age.
Anticipating widespread interest in racism as a public health crisis, we called attention, through data stories, to the tremendous segregation in our County, and the compounding impact of poor social determinants of health found in segregated neighborhoods.
Trained a generation of students (Scott especially!), government officials, and philanthropic and non-profit organizations to use aggregate data to examine population health, health disparities, and social determinants of health through a place-based lens.
Through the Cleveland Medical Hackathon, Amy trained a generation of health innovators to incorporate public health data consider the impact of their technology public health perspectives, and the value of public health data. She also helped public health organizations see ways to utilize real-time data and apps to streamline operations.
Scott and Matthew Kucmanic, our former graduate assistant, have identified important trends in opioid deaths, suicide, and requests for social services, thanks to data from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office and United Way 2-1-1.
Amy has raised awareness of the digital divide as a hidden social determinant of health that is an example of systemic racism that is likely to further exacerbate health disparities.
Finally, the desire to create a visceral Health Data Matters experience inspired the creation of the Neighborhood Immersion for Compassion and Empathy(NICE) Virtual Reality Simulation. Scott and Amy are both keen to facilitate sessions, via the internet for the time being, for groups seeking training to better understand racism, health disparities and the social determinants of health.
Better Health Partnership
Cleveland Department of Public Health
Cuyahoga County Board of Health
Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner
First Year Cleveland
NEOCANDO
United Way 2-1-1
PLACES (formerly: 500 Cities, CDC)
City Data
Data.gov
American Community Survey (Census)
Living Atlas of the World (ArcGIS)
Good Luck!
You can find Amy on twitter @amysheon and LinkedIn;
Scott’s contact information remains unchanged.
