The Community Health Index ranking considers both the national index value and the selected community or service area.
The national index value (from 0 to 100) is calculated for each zip code, census tract, and county in the United States. Communities with the highest index values are estimated to have the highest socioeconomic needs correlated with poor health outcomes.
Ranking within the region helps to identify the relative level of need within the community and service area. The national index value for each location is compared to all other similar locations within the community area to assign a relative rank (from 1 to 5) locally. Locations are ranked using natural breaks classification, which groups the locations into clusters based on similar index values. This method minimizes the variance within a rank and maximizes the variance between ranks. The resulting ranks are used to color the map and chart for the Community Health Index, with darker coloring associated with higher relative need.
If your site's region is composed of a single county, the ranking will be to all other zip codes or census tracts in your county.
If you have multiple counties within your site region, you can change the selection in the comparison drop-down menu to view the ranking within each county separately or across your entire site region.
Please see the attached methodology used to calculate and validate the index.