Recorded presentation

Dennis P. Andrulis, PhD, Department of PReventive Medicine and Community Health, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, 450 Clarkson Ave., Box #1240, Brooklyn, NY 11203, 718-270-7726, dennis.andrulis@downstate.edu

The State University of New York Health Science Center/Brooklyn, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has created a data set that integrates information from Census, CDC and the FBI to describe the social and health changes and challenges occurring in the nation’s 100 largest cities and their suburbs. The result to date has been the publication of a series of monographs addressing healthy people goals, child well being, socioeconomic and maternal/infant changes by race/ethnicity, and quality of life.

This data set overlaps with the State Health Rankings data project on several key measures of education, prenatal care, poverty, violent crime and others. This use of common measures offers the opportunity to provide additional “reference points” for both states and localities—to ascertain how closely their cities/suburbs track with statewide measures.

This presentation will describe and raise questions for discussion about the value of such comparisons. It will provide examples that compare urban/suburban and statewide rates, and will discuss how this information may be useful to health care decision makers in assessing the comparative health of populations residing in metropolitan areas.

Learning Objectives:

• To familiarize the audience with the United Health State Health Rankings, its background, development and statistical properties.
• To teach how the State Health Rankings can be used to stimulate change in health policies and health behaviors.
• To describe how responses to the SHR can be used to develop public health leadership skills.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation