When data is accessible. it
really is vintage to everyone.
You don't know what you don't know.
Everything matters for health.
We're a very diverse population.
You need to use a data driven
approach.
Good data
with excellent stories equals
power.
Power equals change.
Data.
One of the reasons that my team and
I will turn to America's health
rankings for some of our work is
because the data is well documented.
It's easy to download.
It's verifiable.
It's America's data.
It's health defined broadly by
the W.H.O.. not just the absence of
disease. but how are we doing it?
Our health. our socioeconomic
health. our financial health. our
behavioral health.
And then it's a ranking.
So it ranks the states and
relativity to one another.
Analyzing and putting together this
much data in one place takes
so much specialized training and so
much effort.
So for someone to
come across and see all of this
together for free is huge.
For the kind of work I do where I'm
frequently advising state
policymakers or national
policymakers.
It's it's a tremendous
resource.
I had the opportunity to go before
our legislature in our state. and
this was in a very lean year.
and we were successful in getting
additional funding.
I gave them the reason to say yes.
because then they had the data.
The truth is. resources are always
finite and one is always asking
the question. Where can we be most
effective?
And. you know. I have used America's
health rankings. as I know and
others. to help identify places
where resources we
know might be affected.
Health is the foundation of
everything. So if the foundation of
your house. when it's cracked.
everything else is in jeopardy.
What America's health rankings gives
us is the landscape of those
cracks in our foundation. where they
are. how bad they are. and
then what we need to do to fix them.
And I think this is important
because it gives folks an
opportunity to see areas
of success as well as areas where
there are opportunities for
improvement.
I love America's health rankings.
I came to know it when I
led the Department of Health for the
State of North Dakota.
What makes America's health rankings
different from other data sets is
that it's a long tenure
and track record.
The health rankings does a good job
of understanding. The health is
about much more than just medical
care.
And I think it gives you a
perspective of what's really going
on in the community versus someone's
belief on what's going on in
the community.
This data is great for students
because it's accessible.
It's easy for them to understand.
But they also know that it's
reliable. It's America's Health
rankings dot org and it's
interactive.
So you can see with every
one of these states. with every one
of these measures. we even color
coded for you the magnitude of.
Is this measure pulling your state
up in the rank or is it holding it
back?
Data is relatively new.
It's timely and is
accurate.
But it's only valuable if people
take it and use it.