This blog post is part of our quarterly series highlighting the work of Healthy People 2030 Champion organizations. Healthy People 2030 Champions are organizations recognized for their work to improve the health and well-being of people in their communities and to help achieve Healthy People 2030’s goals.
Healthy Northeast Ohio is a web-based repository for population health data that serves 9 counties in Ohio. With frequently updated local and state data — plus a suite of tools to help users understand that data — the platform aims to give public health departments, hospitals, and other partners in the region insights into their community’s health status to guide decision-making. Healthy Northeast Ohio includes Healthy People 2030 targets to allow users to see, at a glance, how local data compare to national targets.
Healthy Northeast Ohio’s work is also closely aligned with the Healthy People 2030 framework. For example, Healthy Northeast Ohio embodies Healthy People 2030’s foundational principle that “promoting and achieving health and well-being nationwide is a shared responsibility that is distributed across the national, state, tribal, and community levels.” Furthermore, the data and resources on Healthy Northeast Ohio’s site are organized in a way that’s similar to Healthy People 2030. The Healthy Northeast Ohio site features indicators to track data on health priorities. And while those indicators aren’t the same as Healthy People 2030 Leading Health Indicators (LHIs), many of them align closely with the focus of Healthy People 2030 LHIs and objectives. Healthy Northeast Ohio also provides a Promising Practices database similar to Healthy People’s evidence-based resources. By organizing the site in a way that’s analogous to Healthy People 2030, Healthy Northeast Ohio enables its partners to use local-level data to set priorities and track their progress within the context of national objectives.
“Healthy Northeast Ohio is committed to advancing the Healthy People 2030 vision by providing data and resources that support community health across our region,” says Sarah Szabo, a Data Analyst at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health who manages Healthy Northeast Ohio.
Making national and local data accessible and actionable
When it comes to understanding community health status and identifying trends, Healthy Northeast Ohio understands the importance of accurate, comprehensive data. That’s why the platform compiles data from over 30 trusted and vetted sources — including Healthy People 2030, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Ohio Department of Health, and local sources like the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office. This means that in addition to data at the state level, users can access data at the county, city, ZIP code, or census tract level.
Healthy Northeast Ohio provides over 300 health and quality of life indicators — many of which align with Healthy People 2030 objectives and LHIs. For example, Healthy Northeast Ohio indicators include:
- Age-adjusted death rate for diabetes (aligned with D-09: Reduce the death rate from any cause in adults with diabetes)
- Percentage of adults who visited a dentist (aligned with OH-08: Increase use of the oral health care system)
- Child food insecurity rate (aligned with NWS-02: Eliminate very low food security in children)
By providing local data for these indicators, Healthy Northeast Ohio fills an important community-level need: making it simple for health professionals and community organizations to identify challenges and trends specific to their communities. “While there might be similarities between counties when it comes to health needs and health trends, there are also a lot of differences that make each of these counties unique,” Szabo says. “That’s why it’s so important for us to provide community-level data that help illustrate these differences.” Additionally, since Healthy Northeast Ohio imports national targets from Healthy People 2030, users can easily assess community progress toward national targets.
Advancing community health improvement efforts
The Healthy Northeast Ohio database is a valuable resource for organizations in the region that are working to improve community health. Many of the public health departments, hospitals, and other partners within the Healthy Northeast Ohio footprint use the data to:
- Conduct community health needs assessments (CHNAs)
- Set strategy for community health improvement plans (CHIPs)
- Inform grant applications and policy and funding decisions
- Create reports and publications
- Conduct research
- Identify health disparities and opportunities to improve health equity
In fact, more than half of the 9 counties in Healthy Northeast Ohio’s region used secondary data from the site when completing their 2022 CHNAs. These counties worked with Conduent Healthy Communities Institute, which helped them analyze the data using its Data Scoring Tool. The tool assigns a score to each of a county’s health and quality of life indicators by comparing its performance against data for other counties, the state, and the nation. This helps each county identify needs and set priorities for community health improvement. In other words, it helps counties see both what they’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.
For example, Ashland County used the Data Scoring Tool to prioritize several substance use and misuse indicators in its CHNA report and compared them against related Healthy People 2030 targets. The county found that its area in need of most improvement was alcohol-impaired driving deaths (related to SU-11: Reduce the proportion of motor vehicle crash deaths that involve a drunk driver). From 2015 to 2019 in Ashland County, 44.1 percent of driving deaths involved alcohol — well above Healthy People’s target of 28.3 percent. “This data helped Ashland County flag alcohol-related driving deaths as an area of concern and begin to take steps toward making changes,” Szabo says. For instance, the county has provided education on the dangers of drinking and driving through school programs and social media messaging, especially during the holiday season when drinking and driving is a particular concern.
Healthy Northeast Ohio’s partners — including health departments, community health centers, and other organizations working toward Healthy People 2030 objectives — use the platform’s Healthy People 2030 Progress Tracker to see how current indicator data compare to Healthy People 2030 targets. This makes it simple for partners to check their progress at any time — not just during the CHNA or CHIP process. The Progress Tracker uses icons so users can identify emerging public health concerns and quickly see whether their community has met Healthy People 2030 targets.
For example, partners can see how their county’s age-adjusted death rate due to cancer compares to the national Healthy People 2030 target of 122.7 cancer deaths per 100,000 population. “If the rate is higher in that county, our partners working in cancer prevention or cancer outreach can use this data to inform their program and planning efforts, such as identifying specific areas for additional screening efforts,” Szabo says.
“The Progress Tracker also increases transparency between partners and their communities because it makes it easy to understand what progress is being made,” Szabo adds.
Lessons learned
When it comes to identifying community health trends, setting priorities, and tracking progress, Szabo offers some tips based on what’s been successful in Northeast Ohio:
Use data to monitor change over time and evaluate activities.
It’s important to take stock of progress and reprioritize goals frequently — not just during a CHNA or while creating a CHIP. Because the Healthy Northeast Ohio database provides both baseline and current data, partners within the Healthy Northeast Ohio footprint can make dynamic adjustments to stay on track with their goals and assess the progress and impact of activities on outcomes. For example, once a CHIP has been set in motion, many partners use data to assess progress along the way so they can adjust their approach as needed if trends aren’t as expected.
Identify shared interests with other organizations, forge strong partnerships, and align strategies.
Szabo has seen a lot of success when organizations team up to conduct CHNAs and set strategy for CHIPs. This approach allows the partners to draw on one another’s expertise and coordinate resources in a way that most effectively meets community needs. For example, Health Improvement Partnership-Cuyahoga (HIP-Cuyahoga) is a collaboration between public health departments, universities, medical centers, community organizations, and other partners across Cuyahoga County that aims to coordinate community health improvement resources and efforts to maximize impact. The Cuyahoga County Board of Health and HIP-Cuyahoga received a Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that it has used to improve nutrition, physical activity opportunities, and access to chronic disease management resources for more than 250,000 residents, most of whom are African Americans living in and around Cleveland.
When developing CHIPs, consider broader health improvement goals.
Healthy Northeast Ohio urges partners to keep state and national targets in mind when setting their community-specific goals, and the state of Ohio encourages hospitals and local health departments to align with the State Health Improvement Plan. Understanding a community’s health status within the context of larger initiatives — including Healthy People 2030 — helps partners focus on areas of collaboration and build multisector partnerships in addition to evaluating their progress over time.
Related Healthy People 2030 objectives:
