Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39487460›Full record

ArticlePopulation health metrics2024

Examining select sociodemographic characteristics of sub-county geographies for public health surveillance.

D Aaron Vinson, Angela K Werner

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Population health metrics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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1citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

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3 · Its place in the literature

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1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

D Aaron VinsonEnvironmental Public Health Tracking Branch, National Center for Environmental Health, Hite Consulting, Inc, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA. dvinson@cdc.gov.
Angela K WernerDivision of Environmental Health Science and Practice, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4770 Buford Highway NE S106-6, Atlanta, GA, 30341, USA.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMapping health outcomes related to environmental health hazards at the county level can lead to a simplification of risks experienced by populations in that county. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program has developed sub-county geographies that aggregate census tracts to allow for stable, minimally suppressed data to be displayed. This helps to highlight more local variation in environmental health outcomes and risk data. However, we wanted to understand whether the aggregation method used was aggregating sociodemographically similar or dissimilar areas with one another. This analysis attempts to explore whether the distributions of select people who may be at increased risk for exposure to environmental health hazards as identified by the Tracking Program are preserved in these sub-county geographies with the census tracts used as the foundation to create them.

methodsMean values of three sociodemographic characteristics (persons aged 65 years and older, people from racial and ethnic minority groups, and population below the poverty level) for each sub-county geography in five states were calculated and placed into five break groups. Differences in break groups were determined and compared for each sub-county geography and census tract.

resultsThe sociodemographic characteristics among the census tracts and two aggregated sub-county geographies were similar. In some instances, census tracts with a low population or a highly skewed population (e.g., very high percentage of population aged 65 years and older) were aggregated with dissimilar census tracts out of necessity to meet the requirements set by the Tracking Program's aggregation methodology. This pattern was detected in 2.41-6.59% of census tracts within the study area, depending on the sociodemographic variable and aggregation level.

conclusionsThe Tracking Program's sub-county aggregation methodology aggregates census tracts with similar characteristics. The two new sub-county geographies can serve as a potential option for health officials and policymakers to develop targeted interventions using finer resolution health outcome and environmental hazard data compared to coarser resolution county-level data.

Indexed as

CensusesAgedEnvironmental ExposureEthnicityFemaleHumansMalePovertyPublic Health SurveillanceSociodemographic FactorsSocioeconomic FactorsUnited StatesAggregationCensus tractEnvironmental healthSociodemographicsSub-countySurveillanceTracking

Identifiers

PMID39487460
PMCPMC11529240

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