New tool allows detailed state health comparisons and analysis across a wealth of metrics

State Health Compare is an important new resource that will help state policymakers get the information they need. The tool, created by SHADAC, provides state-level estimates across 46 measures of health and health care. Through the site, visitors can create customized reported of state-level health estimates. The tool brings together data from six federal agency sources. Categories include health insurance coverage, cost of care, health behaviors, outcomes, access, utilization, quality of care, public health, and social and economic factors. Metrics include costs of potentially preventable hospitalizations, percent of residents who needed but did not get care due to cost, chronic disease prevalence, weight assessment in schools, and adult cancer screening rates. Data for most measures is available for multiple years, allowing trend analysis. Within most of the 46 measures, the tool allows visitors to dive deeper into the data by subpopulations such as by age, race/ethnicity, and education level. The tool provides a map, state rank and trend display for each metric. The data can be downloaded and exported.