Health – where we live, work and learn

November 20, 2013

For more than a decade, the Greater Louisville Project has provided research and data analysis to catalyze civic action, particularly around three Deep Drivers of Change: Education, 21st Century Jobs, and Quality of Place. In our recently released Special Report on Health, it was no surprise to learn of the direct correlation and connection to Health and the three Deep Drivers.

  • Evidence shows that healthier students achieve greater academic success and ultimately higher educational attainment.
  • Research shows that a healthier workforce is more productive, has lower healthcare costs and makes Louisville more attractive for growth of 21st Century Jobs.
  • Healthier residents promote and expect a greater quality of place.

When looking at Louisville’s Health Outcomes ranking – a combination of length of life and quality of life lived- placement of 10th among 15 cities means we have a lot of work to do to fully enjoy the positive results of health’s impact on education, jobs/income and our quality of place.

So many times, we talk about individual choice and healthcare mandates . . . but it is important to look closely at the programs, infrastructure, policies and behaviors in support of a healthier Louisville. We must remember that Health happens where we live, work and learn as we make decisions in our schools, businesses, and neighborhoods that influence change and direct better outcomes.

We recognize the work being done currently to build a healthier Louisville. Over the next several weeks, we will invite local leaders and passionate advocates to share their feedback to the GLP health report.  We will continue the conversation and work to catalyze action to increase the momentum around Louisville’s agenda to become an even healthier city.   We invite you to share your ideas for driving the greatest improvement in the health of our community.

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Natural Breaks Algorithm

For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.

Z-Scores

Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).

Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.