OnlyBoth Inc. has launched at BenchMine.com new population-health engines that provide detailed comparative insights on specific city neighborhoods across the United States. The 52 Artificial Intelligence-powered engines – one for each state plus D.C. and New England – automatically compare census tracts across 500 cities and discover unique insights spotlighting neighborhood health disparities and specific drivers that impact health outcomes, all for improved community engagement.
Population-health comparisons are essential for healthcare providers, payers, and government and local health officials seeking to identify both challenges and achievements in the neighborhoods they serve. As healthcare stakeholders make population health a priority, they need to deeply understand their communities to successfully engage with them and meet their unique demands. Organizations can thus break down the complex goal of improving population health by identifying key interventions in each area and implementing them neighborhood by neighborhood.
“To advance health outcomes within communities, it’s vital to articulate and understand local disparities and challenges,” said OnlyBoth CEO and co-founder Raul Valdes-Perez, PhD. “Especially in vulnerable communities, comparative insights are needed to guide proper allocation of resources for health interventions. These engines deliver on these needs.”
To generate comparative insights, OnlyBoth uses source data from the CDC’s 500 Cities: Local Data for Better Health, a project that targets 27 measures of chronic disease related to unhealthy behaviors, health outcomes, and the use of preventive services. (See a full list here.) Benchmine.com lets users assess, compare, score and discover neighborhoods defined by census tracts. The Bureau of Census establishes census tracts for analyzing the U.S. population in local groups of up to 8,000 people.
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Following are four examples of unique comparative insights for various population health measures:
Obesity:
- This census tract in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., has the most adult obesity at 48.1% among all 5,368 Calif. neighborhoods. That 48.1% compares to an average of 24.9%. Furthermore, the engine notes that reaching the statewide average would imply a decrease of 1,749 obese adults over time, with an estimated saving of $161,346,688 based on a lifetime societal and public-health cost of $92,235 per obese adult.
Diabetes:
- In New York, this census tract in lower Manhattan has the 7th-most diagnosed diabetes among adults (23.5%) among all the 2,490 New York neighborhoods, whose overall average is 11.6%. This area also has notably higher rates of high cholesterol, no leisure-time physical activity, coronary heart disease, and stroke, although its adult obesity is below the New York state median despite the high diabetes.
High blood pressure:
- In New York, only Rikers Island has both as much high blood pressure among adults (28.6%) and so few adults with high blood pressure who take medicine for its control (55.4%).
Healthy behaviors:
- On a positive note, this Washington, D.C. neighborhood is one of just 8 D.C. neighborhoods that are better than the citywide averages in each of obesity (20.8%), smoking (9.4%), binge drinking (22.4%), lack of exercise (11.3%), and sleep deprivation (31.2%).
OnlyBoth Inc. has previously launched healthcare engines for comparative analytics and reporting that benchmark thousands of hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis facilities, long-term-care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, home health agencies, and hospice agencies nationwide to help achieve greater transparency in healthcare environments.
Date: September 17, 2019
Source: PR Newswire
