CDC 500 Cities

Context:

Public health is a large and expensive problem for policymakers to understand in order to provide health services and prevent future epidemics. Self-reported data can be tricky due to many sampling issues, but it can paint an interesting picture of how healthy a given area’s population might be.

Content:

Data includes small area samples of residents from 500 US cities. Recorded is the percent of residents who answered a public health-related question affirmatively (see here). In addition to crude data, additional data is provided with age adjustment applied. 95% Confidence Intervals also provided for both datapoints.

Acknowledgements:

This data was collected by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Population Health. 500 Cities Project Data [online]. 2016 [accessed Aug 10, 2017]. URL: https://www.cdc.gov/500cities.

Inspiration:

• Are there any regional health trends?
• Any unusual hotspots of declining health? Higher levels of wellness?
• Can you split the data by geography and predict neighboring cities health?
• Who's healthier, larger or smaller cities?