CountyHealthRankings.org Gives First County-by-County Snapshot of Health in Each State

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 18 — CountyHealthRankings.org, a new site produced by Forum One Communications, provides the first look at the overall health of every county in all 50 states. The site was unveiled at an event on Wednesday in Washington by its sponsors, the University of Wisconsin's Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

While other studies have ranked entire states on health factors, this site is the first to showcase the impact of multiple health factors in every U.S. county. The site will help public health professionals, community leaders, policy makers, and consumers discover how healthy their county is compared to other counties and to uncover strategies to reduce disparities and improve community health.

Forum One created all of the site's branding elements, developed the site's information architecture, designed its visual look, and built the site using Drupal, a leading open-source content management system. The data and content were provided by policy staff at the University of Wisconsin with support from Burness Communications.

"We were honored to lend a hand in developing a site for this historic data release," said Andrew Cohen, Managing Director at Forum One. "This new site provides Americans the specific information they need — no matter where they live — to take control of their community's health."

The site features interactive, color-coded health outcome maps for each state — such as this Virginia map — illustrating the relative health of all of the state's counties. Each state also has an overall ranking table listing the counties from best to worst. (See Virginia's table.) Additionally, a user can view maps for individual counties, such as Fairfax County, Va., explaining the indicators used to determine the rankings and how each impact's overall health.

The site ranks counties in two ways: "Health factors" (e.g., air quality, access to healthy foods, and graduation rates) and "health outcomes" (e.g., rate of people dying before age 75).

A Take Action page provides resources that will help mobilize government officials, community leaders, health professionals, employers, and others to adopt actionable strategies to improve health care in their communities. The site makes it easy for users to engage with the information and share their findings with their social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The site has already received substantial attention and has been prominently featured by CNN, MSNBC, Business Week, the Washington Post, USA Today, and hundreds of local media outlets.

Forum One provides expertise in internet strategy, online community and collaboration, user experience and design, social media, and innovative web site development to help organizations expand their influence and increase their impact. For more information, visit www.forumone.com.

Contact: Andrew Cohen, acohen@forumone.com, 703-894-4350.