At the recent Health Datapalooza held March 27-28, 2019 in Washington DC, OnlyBoth’s submission to the Healthiest Communities Data Challenge was recognized as one of the three finalists, all equal co-winners of the Challenge.  We submitted our portfolio of four distinct comparative-analytics engines – benchmarking, comparison, discovery, and scoring – to extract maximum value from the rich county-level dataset on Social Determinants of Health, made available to the pool of 30 contestants, to which we added Census data on county populations.  The resulting engines are accessible via Benchmine.com, or directly at sdoh.onlyboth.com.

Our supporting partners in this submission were HealthBegins and the Allegheny County Health Department.  The benchmarking engine, used to deeply assess the comparative performance of a single county against others nearby and nationwide, was augmented by HealthBegins with recommended actions to take for certain performance deficiencies. For example, here is a comparative deficiency for Bronx County:

Bronx County, New York has the most adults who don’t eat enough daily fruits & vegetables (77.60%) among the 64 counties with at least 876,764 in population (Bronx County, New York is at 1,471,160). That 77.60% compares to an average of 73.58% and standard deviation of 2.90% across those 64 counties. […]  Among those 64 counties, it also has the most adult diabetes (12.3%).

which can be addressed by the recommendations seen by clicking on Taking Action.

Institutions and communities can take a specific, multi-pronged approach to increase daily consumption of fruits and vegetables among adults.  The CDC Guide to Strategies to Increase the Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables describes each of the following strategies in detail. […]

Want to evaluate your city or state?  Let’s say Boston.  Assess the social determinants of health in Suffolk County or Middlesex County.  Then do a side-by-side comparison of the 7 counties surrounding Boston.  Then examine the biggest achievements and improvement opportunities (i.e., deficiencies) across all Massachusetts counties.

Migrating to California, here are two interesting comparative insights for San Francisco county and San Mateo county.

San Francisco County, California has the most violent crimes per 100,000 population (702.66) of the 78 counties with at least $78,621 in median household income (San Francisco County, California is at $81,294). […]

Only San Mateo County, California has both such a high median household income ($93,623) and such a high natural amenities index (8.19). […]

We at OnlyBoth are pleased to show that AI-style comparative analytics can enable unprecedented transparency in both healthcare as well as health, and thus help drive performance improvements and inform consumer choice, all for the public good.

Raul Valdes-Perez