Be Healthy Sacramento – a new health data website was launched this week by Sacramento County Division of Public Health as a salute to National Public Health week. Have you ever wondered how healthy your neighborhood is? Maybe you need local data for a grant application or school project. Finding local health data is now easier than ever with the new Public Health data website, which has been designed to be a hub for public data on a variety of topics, everything from economy to health.
The National Public Health week theme this year is Healthiest Nation 2030, encouraging everyone to work together to make the U.S. the healthiest nation by 2030. Looking at the health of our community compared to other communities in the nation will help us know where we can improve.
As a community, we also need to broaden our view of what public health is. Public health is not simply vaccines and disease control; Public Health encompasses all aspects of life that can impact health, including parks, public safety, and even grocery store locations, to name a few.
Because of this, the new website also includes information and data on economic development, air quality and education. A built environment with easy access to walking and biking trails can encourage a community to be more active.
The Be Healthy Sacramento page allows visitors to view data in multiple formats. For an easy look at how Sacramento County compares to California and the nation, the community dashboard uses a green-yellow-red scale to quickly show visitors the comparisons of Sacramento County to other counties on a particular data point. Green means good, yellow is average and red is bad. For example, Sacramento County has an above average for high breast cancer incident rate compared to other U.S. counties, so the dashboard for breast cancer is in the red zone. On the other hand, Sacramento has a below average or low lung and bronchus cancer incident rate compared to other U.S. counties, so the dashboard is in the green zone.
“Public Health receives lots of data requests,” says Dr. Olivia Kasirye, Sacramento County Public Health Officer. “This website is a place we can send the public and media to get the information they need in an easy to comprehend format.”
In addition to being a central point for health and other public data, the new site also hosts a number of recent public health stories and information such as the latest news on Ebola and Measles. With quick links to the Centers for Disease Control, California Department of Public Health, and Sacramento County Public Health webpages, the Be Healthy Sacramento website has everything you could want to know about the health of the community.
