Social Determinants of Health

Purpose

This analysis aims to compare health status with social determinants of health by examining the rates of self-reported mental distress given population estimates, poverty rates, population size, and reported excessive drinking at the county level.

The focus on social determinants has increasingly become the focus of health care decision-making. The use of non-clinical data has implications for the likelihood of healthcare access, patient adherence to medication, and safety (Health Research & Educational Trust, 2017). For example, in 2015, the Institute of Medicine released a report that provides recommendations for specific social determinants of health that should be captured within electronic health record systems and has also been integrated into the Quality Payment Program (Adler & Stead, 2015, Feller et al., 2020). More recently, Healthy People 2030 released five overarching goals, which included social determinants of health and the specific goal to “Create social, physical, and economic environments that promote attaining the full potential for health and well-being for all.” Social Determinants of Health are represented by the five domains of economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social community context. Disparities in education and income are identified as indicators for early health intervention (Probst & Ajmal, 2019). They are now backed by resources (CDC, 2021), continuing to focus on using social determinants to address healthcare quality, equity, efficiency, and cost.

This scenario includes benchmarks for each appropriate variable. State-level benchmarks are accessible by filtering by state. Scenarios with multiple outcome variables require filtering by the specific outcome to return the corresponding benchmarks.

This data is also available as an Excel spreadsheet.

Social Determinants 2022.xlsx (252.72 KB)

Tutorial Video
Data Sources
Defining The Columns

In this tutorial video, we look at Social Determinants of Health. The video guides you through how to use Tableau data analysis to compare health status with social determinants of health by examining the rates of self-reported mental distress given population estimates, poverty rates, population size, and reported excessive drinking at the county level.

Social Determinants of Health Tutorial Video

County Health Ranking (data released 2022)

Note: Because the number of events for an indicator may be too small to report for a county for any single year, data were aggregated over several years (3, 5, or 10 years depending on county population) for the measures of birth and death to increase the number of counties with available data. Data was aggregated for counties with a population size of less than 25,000 from 1996-2005. Counties with a population between 25,000 and 99,999 include data aggregated from 2001-2005. Finally, counties that have a population size greater than 100,000 include data that was aggregated from the years 2003-2005. Death rates were age-adjusted to the 2000 standard calculated by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Mortality data were from the National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics System, 1996–2005 for the ICD-9/ICD-10 codes listed after each variable.

A blank entry indicates unreported data. A value of zero is defined and does not represent unreported data.

State: The abbreviated name of the state where the county is located.

County: The name of the county where the information was collected. County names are listed as provided on the US Census Bureau's list of 2020 FIPS Codes for Counties and County Equivalent Entities.

Population Size: The total number of individuals residing in the county. This data is a mid-year estimate of the resident population for 2020.

Children in Poverty Rate: The percentage of children under age 18 living in poverty. Family defines poverty status; either everyone in the family is in poverty or no one in the family is in poverty. Data is from the Small Area Income Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) in 2020.

Frequent Mental Distress Rate: The percentage of adults who reported ≥14 days in response to the question, "Now, thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?" Data is from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey in 2019.

Excessive Drinking Rate: The percentage of adults that report either binge drinking, defined as consuming more than 4 (women) or 5 (men) alcoholic beverages on a single occasion in the past 30 days, or heavy drinking, defined as drinking more than one (women) or 2 (men) drinks per day on average. Data is from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey in 2019.

Rate of Poor or Fair Health: The percentage of adults aged 18 years and older who report "fair" or "poor" overall health. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey provides the measure. Data is only provided for counties with more than 50 respondents to the BRFSS survey and is from 2019.

Population Type: An indication of whether a county is predominantly metropolitan, micropolitan, or rural.