An essential step in addressing the social drivers of health (SDoH) in your community is understanding and learning about the lived experience of the residents and communities you serve. There are resources available that can help you understand how SDoH affect a specific community’s health. These include various measures, mapping tools, and data sets to assess conditions in a given population or location.
Utilizing one of the websites below to review data and better understand the needs of your community is a great way to support your health improvement work, help to identify and understand disparities in your community, and reinforce the need to address a specific SDoH. Although data does not always provide the whole picture, it is an essential piece of the story for your community’s health and how SDoH impacts its residents' health and well-being.
Not sure where to start? Need additional resources? Please reach out. We are happy to help!
- The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR&R) report highlights how access to opportunity and economic security is tied to residents’ health and variable depending on their location within the state.
- The National Opioid Misuse Community Assessment Tool was developed by NORC at the University of Chicago’s Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development. The tool integrates overdose mortality rates by county, including social determinants of health data.
- The Feeding America, Map the Meal Gap interactive map provides an overview of food insecurity among the overall population in Michigan by county.
- The NORC at the University of Chicago Rural Health Mapping Tool provides information on COVID-19 vaccination rates, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, and other health and sociodemographic information in communities across the United States.
- The State Rural Health Inequity Dashboard by NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis displays the mortality rate for the top ten leading causes of death related to the national mortality rate by rural-urban status in Region C.
- The Opportunity Index is an annual report developed by Opportunity Nation, a campaign of the Forum for Youth Investment and Child Trends. The Index provides data that show what opportunity looks like in the United States.
- The Michigan Community Health Information provided by the Division for Vital Records & Health Statistics lists frequently requested regional health data through the Community Health Information website.
- Explore the United States Census Data through data profiles covering different geographies, including states, counties, places, tribal areas, zip codes, and congressional districts. Discover data on specific topics for each profile, such as education, employment, health, and housing.
- The Michigan Primary Care Needs Assessment by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services provides a county-level analysis of health outcomes and social determinants of health needs across Michigan.
- This analysis by the National Rural Health Resource Center aims to compare health status with social determinants of health by examining the rates of self-reported mental distress given population estimates, poverty rates, population size, and reported excessive drinking at the county level.
- The Opportunity Index is an annual report developed by Opportunity Nation, a campaign of the Forum of Youth Investment and Child Trends, that provides data that show what opportunity looks like in the United States. It offers a snapshot of conditions that can be used to identify and improve access to opportunities for residents and their communities.
- The North Carolina Rural Health Research Program chartbook represents variations in U.S. population health in rural areas across all Census regions and states. Where the data allow, we also present rural population health findings by sex, race, and ethnicity.
- The 2018 Community Health Needs Assessment Community Analysis is a systematic review of community health needs assessments (CHNA) performed for each corresponding hospital in Michigan’s rural counties.
- Rural Healthy People 2030: Common Challenges, Rural Nuances: Study by the Southwest Rural Health Research Center that reports the findings of Rural Healthy People 2030, a companion piece to the Healthy People 2030 initiative, and identifies the top 20 Healthy People priorities for rural America.
- PLACES provides health data for small areas across the county, which allows organizations, regardless of population size and rurality, to better understand the burden and geographic distribution of health measures in their areas and assist them in planning health interventions. PLACES: Local Data for Better Health | CDC
Social Drivers of Health Manager Contact
Laura Mispelon, MHA
Social Drivers of Health Manager
Michigan Center for Rural Health
laura.mispelon@affiliate.msu.edu