NYU launches online tool to understand communities' health needs

Modern Healthcare

New York University School of Medicine researchers on Tuesday launched an online resource that city governments across the country can use to identify and help set policies for improving their communities' health needs.

The City Health Dashboard will let users access demographic data from 500 of the largest U.S. cities and reports on 36 health measures such as air quality, housing, walkability, smoking and obesity, as well as level of access to clinical-care services.

Researchers at NYU School of Medicine's population health department spent two years developing the tool after noticing that mayors across the country claimed a lack of health data on their residents prevented them from making health a higher priority in their agendas, according to Dr. Marc Gourevitch, department chair and the program's principal architect. "If you're a small or medium-sized city, you can't just go and look up data on the health status or the drivers of health in your city," Gourevitch said. "We tried to step up to that challenge."