The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has launched a new public health data dashboard, giving both lawmakers and residents a clearer picture of trends across the state.
The tool allows users to compare health metrics across state House and Senate districts, including health outcomes, health behavior trends and social and economic factors. There’s data from a variety of public health areas like vaccination rates, birth metrics, chronic diseases and firearm-related deaths.
Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian is the Chief Medical Executive at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. She says the state created the dashboard in response to bipartisan requests from state legislators seeking better access to public health data to help in policy making — it’s designed to make it easy to see health disparities and bright spots.
“You can take a look at a map and see where the districts that are doing better than the Michigan average, or close to the Michigan average, or worse than the Michigan average,” Bagdasarian said. “I think that's really helpful for legislators who are looking at the policies to help their constituents.”
The tool can help constituents too, shining a light on problems and areas for improvement where they live.
“This is really a starting place for dialog to happen,” she said. “Legislators and the public can use this data to truly understand what the needs are and what we can do to improve the health of everyone living in the state of Michigan.”
The dashboard is free and publicly accessible on the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services website.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.