|
Information Resources
Descriptions of Related Programs
County Health Rankings (University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute)
The County Health Rankings, to be released in February 2010, are based on a model of population health that emphasizes the many factors-clinical care access and quality of care, health behaviors, social and economic factors, and the physical environment-that, if improved, can help people lead healthier lives and make communities healthier places to live, work, learn and play. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is collaborating with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to develop these Rankings.
The Rankings are a `Call to Action` for communities to improve their health by developing multi-sector partnerships and innovative strategies to address the broad determinants of health.
This model has been used to rank the health of counties in Wisconsin for the past six years. A similar model has also been recently used in Tennessee, Kansas, and New Mexico. The Rankings stimulate discussion and action within communities, regardless of how they are ranked, and can lead to policies, programs and other decisions aimed at improving health.
Each state`s counties will be ranked on both health outcomes (today`s health) and health determinants (representing tomorrow`s health).
Ranking counties` health helps community leaders recognize that good health is everybody`s responsibility and encourages them to work together to help their citizens live longer, healthier lives. Back To Top
Center for Health Equality at Drexel School of Public Health
Organizations which fund projects with a focus on healthcare are continually evaluating their ability to make a positive impact on the health and well-being of the nation. National healthcare reform has taken center stage in the past few months and with this reform it becomes increasingly important for organizations to have access to county and community-specific health data to guide their funding decisions. Drexel School of Public Health`s Center for Health Equality recently completed a project with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in which a comprehensive review was conducted of publicly available national, state and regional datasets to identify those related in large part to the Foundation`s Regional Quality Strategy`s (RQS) major areas of interest, namely quality indicators, disparities and nursing data. The goal of the RQS project was to help groups of stakeholders in targeted communities across the country set and achieve ambitious goals to improve the quality and value of health care for their region. Experience and research show that local conditions heavily influence the quality and nature of health care and affecting change relies on a team approach. The Center for Health Equality focused on providing the Foundation and other stakeholders with an overview of local health, organizational, and infrastructure conditions of the communities they were hoping to serve.
The Drexel team created a National Data Inventory Matrix that summarized data sets and their variables, presenting information on their current state of availability at the local/regional level and by race/ethnicity as well as highlighting strengths and limitations. National datasets included in the Matrix were further investigated to assess their applicability for developing statistical profiles tracking quality/equality and other relevant indicators across the RQS sites. Relying on this data, Project Staff developed 22 individually-tailored regional profiles summarizing `what the data say` for select and relevant indicators on: demographics; health status, behavior, and mortality; individual hospital quality; regional quality; and hospital-based financial status and nurse staffing. Analysis of these regional profiles yielded several implications for policy, delivery of healthcare and healthcare practice including the following: (1) Comparisons between hospital specific, regional, all RQS sites and the national indicators can provide a useful context for site specific and regional leadership strategic planning and balanced report card monitoring, and (2) Existing data and measures of hospital quality and racial disparities are more useful for regional planning than for market related hospital performance report cards.
Back to Top
|