Online tool expands access to information on local health issues

About a third of the nation’s population can now browse location-specific information about health and the factors that drive it, through a service Waco helped pilot.

City Health Dashboard has worked for the past year with the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District and Prosper Waco, along with three other cities, to develop a tool intended to inform leaders in the 500 most populous U.S. cities about how factors including education, wealth and location connect to health.

The Department of Population Health at New York University launched the pilot with Waco; Flint, Michigan; Kansas City, Kansas; and Providence, Rhode Island, with 26 measures and, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has expanded cityhealthdashboard.com to include 36 measures for 500 cities, according to the website.