Much has been written about the increased polarization of America and its collective impact on communities. There were many surprises in the 2016 election and people are bracing for a potentially tumultuous 2018 mid-term election. Ohio, where I live, is one of the swing states. The average county in Ohio…
Moonlighting used to be a term that described a minority of people. If you moonlighted, you were supplementing your income. You either did it for extra cash or because you had to just to pay the bills. The freelance economy and the growth of the personal transportation industry alone have…
The building boom is officially back after a long hiatus. The number of construction employees increased 5% in 2016 according to the most recent County Business Patterns released by the U.S. Census. The sector however with the most number of new establishments is the Information sector (NAICS 51) which increased 5%….
Sierra Vista, AZ and Hinesville, GA probably don’t seem to have much in common. One is in eastern Arizona and the other is in southeast Georgia. They are both very small cities with populations of around 40,000. What they have in common is a market concentration for computer occupations with…
As we approach this Memorial Day Weekend, we pause to remember the sacrifice made on our behalf by our veterans. Nationwide veterans comprise 8% of the population. But there are clusters of populations where veterans comprise much higher percentages of the population. This article from Trulia published in Forbes back…
I was in the Bay Area this week for a health technology conference at Stanford University. I took Lyft back and forth from where I was staying. While conversing with one driver in my rudimentary Spanish, I found out that his family was spending $3,000 a month for a two…
They are building three new homes across from my house here in Northeast Ohio. It seems we are past the time of the severe slowdown of housing starts and there has been a mini-housing resurgence. Home inventory levels remain low. The problem is, like my new neighbors, new housing tends…
I love spring! As a warm weather person living in the Northeast, I can’t wait to get outside and be physically active. While many are like me, still 29% of the U.S. remains by and large physically inactive and it is very regionally concentrated. The County Health Rankings uses a measure…
This is the third year that the Campus Safety and Security (CSS) data has released separate violence against women (VAW) offenses. This data captures three types of offenses; domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking and analyzes it for both on campus and off campus locations. Overall, there were 16,183 VAW…
This week, CMS released 2016 Opioid Part D Prescribing Rates data which follows on the heels of the original release several months ago. This data release includes Opioid prescriber, claims, and extended release claims at the national, state, county, and zip code level. We have updated our Opioid Prescribing Rates…
How financially fit is your institution? One of the measures that Forbes has used in assessing the financial fitness of postsecondary institutions is endowment assets per FTE. This metric takes the value of endowment assets at the end of the year and divides it by the number of FTE’s. In…
County Health Rankings has always used Premature Death as a measure in deriving its ranking formula. Years of Potential Life Lost Before Age 75 (or YPLL) counts as 50% of the Health Outcomes score. Every death occurring before the age of 75 contributes to the total number of years of potential…