Los Angeles County has launched a new searchable database focused on health and wellness.
Users can search and track more than 100 key health metrics, including community safety and smoking rates, in 179 communities.
of Community medical profile website It covers most of the county, including cities, unincorporated areas, supervisory districts, neighborhoods within Los Angeles, and city council districts with a population of 20,000 or more.
The site allows users to compare these geographic areas, said Rashmi Shetgiri, chief scientific officer for L.A. County Public Health.
“We combine traditional health outcomes and health behaviors with broader determinants of health, such as access to health care, and social, economic, and environmental determinants of health, such as poverty, housing, and environmental conditions. We have over 100 indicators that combine factors,” said Shetgiri.
The website will be continuously updated with new health data. It is only available in English and does not include data for Pasadena or Long Beach, instead linked to their respective health departments.
Shetgiri said this data can reveal significant inequalities between geographic areas.
“For example, in eight communities the average life expectancy is less than 75 years, but in five communities it is over 85 years, a difference of more than 10 years even within the same county,” she said.
Shetgiri said the website can also be used to support targeting policies and prevention strategies by examining multiple indicators within a community.
To make the data as accessible and user-friendly as possible, the website offers several interactive formats. This includes a map-based platform and comparison tools that allow for side-by-side evaluation of multiple regions and community-specific reporting, including detailed reports. The county says it provides insights tailored to each region.
“This data is extremely valuable and extremely important,” said Akil Bell, grants and contracts manager at Black Women for Wellness, an L.A. reproductive justice nonprofit that uses the data in grant applications. He said he plans to use it.
“As we track funders considering how to support reproductive justice, environmental justice, and sex education, we can use this data to identify organizations that are spread across the state but may not know much about Los Angeles. It allows us to communicate with the people who are funding it,” Bell said. Added.
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