Providence one of four U.S. cities taking part in City Health Dashboard initiative

PROVIDENCE IS one of four cities participating in the City Health Dashboard.
PROVIDENCE IS one of four cities participating in the City Health Dashboard.

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island’s capital city is one of four cities around the country that has been chosen to pilot a City Health Dashboard, a resource to help officials understand, compare and take action to improve health status and health risks in their communities.

Said Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, “By reporting city-level data on physical activity levels and obesity prevalence, the dashboard will help us evaluate our progress toward our goal of making Providence one of the healthiest, most fit cities in New England. Physical fitness and overall wellness have been important priorities for my administration, and this exciting initiative gives us a new tool to build a healthy, strong and vibrant city.”

Launched by the New York University School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health, NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, National Resource Network and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the other cities participating in the pilot are Flint, Mich.; Kansas City, Kan.; and Waco, Texas.

“We created the City Health Dashboard in response to local demand for more accurate data about the health of our cities’ citizens,” Dr. Marc Gourevitch, chair of the Department of Population Health and principal investigator for the City Health Dashboard, said in a statement. “City leaders know that ‘what gets measured is what gets done.’ They want accurate, actionable data so they can improve their population’s health, bring down health care-related costs, and focus on community well-being.”

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The website features 26 measures related to health in five categories: health outcomes, health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment. The data include traditional health metrics such as premature mortality, teen birth rate and adult obesity prevalence, as well as non-health measures that impact health, including unemployment rate, third-grade reading proficiency, neighborhood walkability and air quality.

Measures are presented at the city level and by neighborhood, where possible, based on census tract, and by demographic group.

The interactive online tool also displays national averages, so cities can compare their data on select metrics to national values.

For example, users can look up data on the percentage of houses reporting pest infestations. Providence’s average percentage is 23 in this category, which is higher than the national average of 20.9 percent.

Third-grade reading proficiency is low in Providence at an average of 14 percent, the data shows. That is considerably lower than the national average in this category of 34 percent.

Cities were selected to participate after a competitive application process involving cities in the National Resource Network, a Housing and Urban Development-funded program that helps communities address challenges.

David Eichenthal, executive director of the National Resource Network, said in the organization’s work with nearly 50 cities around the country, they learned that officials want to improve the health of their residents as much as the economic and fiscal health of their communities.

“Now, through the City Health Dashboard, local decision makers in these four cities have the data that they need to work to create healthier communities,” he said in prepared remarks.

All four cities participating face the same economic challenges – high rates of children in poverty, high unemployment and high housing costs, according to dashboard data. They also have higher teen birth and violent crime rates and lower high school graduation rates than the national average.

Some findings have been positive: Jail incarceration is lower than the national average in Providence (218.5 per 100,000 population compared with the national average of 326), and Providence also has lower adult obesity rates (25.2 percent compared with the national average of 28.9 percent).

Data in the dashboard is gathered from federal and state governments and organizations such as the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Environmental Protection Agency. The City Health Dashboard may be expanded to other cities in the future, the release stated.

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