The Story Behind the Map: How Evanston, IL Uses Data to Drive Community Health Action
Evanston, ILBy: Annie Robinson
Part 1: A Data-Informed Health Department
Significant inequities existed in life expectancy and child poverty across neighborhoods in Evanston, Illinois – a city of approximately 75,000 residents – before the COVID-19 pandemic. Those health disparities were exacerbated as the pandemic unfolded. City leaders recognized an urgent need to take action. But Evanston lacked in-house expertise and capacity to analyze the data that could inform where to intervene or what course of action would address these disparities.
That's when Kristin Meyer stepped in. The City of Evanston hired Meyer to lead their health department’s Community Health Assessment in March 2020. She brought a decade’s worth of experience in public health nonprofits: Meyer previously worked in the research wing of a safety net hospital dedicated to exploring health inequities at the community-level on the West side of Chicago. Prior to that, Meyer worked at a public health institute conducting community health assessments across Illinois.
Meyer has always been committed to utilizing data to achieve improvements in community health. But she knows that geographically granular data are not always easy to find. In Illinois, health departments must conduct a community health assessment every five years. But most health departments are county-level, meaning only county-level health data are usually available. Evanston's city-level health department needed to find robust, relevant data that was specific to the city, which could be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Meyer has always been committed to utilizing data to achieve improvements in community health. But she knows that geographically granular data are not always easy to find. In Illinois, health departments must conduct a community health assessment every five years. But most health departments are county-level, meaning only county-level health data are usually available. Evanston's city-level health department needed to find robust, relevant data that was specific to the city, which could be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Meyer describes feeling lucky to have discovered the City Health Dashboard in 2018, a one-stop, free, neighborhood-level data resource she needed. The Dashboard allowed Meyer – a "non-data person" – to explore health data for the topics and places most pertinent to her work. Meyer turned to the Dashboard to help guide the city's efforts to reduce health disparities between neighborhoods. "We knew the inequities were growing," Meyer explains. "If it was that bad before the pandemic, in the aftermath, it only felt more urgent to act."
First, Meyer used the Dashboard’s 2015 neighborhood-level Life Expectancy metric to identify the communities most in need of support. Next, Meyer examined metrics on structural drivers of health, like Rent Burden and Lead Exposure Risk Index. Meyer used these data to gain insight into neighborhood-level health patterns in Evanston: "The story behind the data became clear and visible." What Meyer learned from City Health Dashboard data allowed her to strategically develop Evanston’s 2022 EPLAN, a city-wide community health assessment.
Meyer and her team partly addressed the drivers behind the maps by conducting an "Environmental Inequity Investigation", which was called for and completed in response to data laid out in the 2022 EPLAN. Based on the findings of this report, community-based organizations developed their own health assessments and rewrote their strategic plans to ensure resources reached the neighborhoods in greatest need. Meyer notes: “The 2022 EPLAN was so much more robust because of city-level data from the City Health Dashboard. Our community health assessment, powered by Dashboard data, allows us to drill down to neighborhood, race, and ethnicity level inequities. That empowers us to make data-driven decisions about how we can improve community health and wellbeing.”
Kristin Meyer, City of Evanston
City Health Dashboard has been indispensable to Evanston in terms of learning the extent to which we experience health inequity. As a generally affluent community, it looks like we're doing great on every metric. But when you stratify down to the neighborhood level, and the level of race and ethnicity where possible, we see a very different picture emerge - where the well-being of some groups has artificially inflated the picture of overall health and well-being in our community. Knowing where inequity lies, we can really drill down and focus our resource allocation and policy creation to address those specific weaknesses in our institutional supports, policies, and programs that are driving that inequity so we can start redressing some of those issues.
Kristin Meyer, City of Evanston, Health Department
Meyer is currently working on an updated EPLAN for 2027. Unlike the 2022 EPLAN, this one incorporates mortality data like Premature Deaths and other city-level mortality data, stratified by race, which will help guide on-the-ground efforts to reduce health disparities between Evanston’s neighborhoods. In viewing Evanston’s data on the Dashboard today, she observes how the data are evolving: "We're now seeing data suggesting gentrification and displacement – a more nuanced story needs to be told now; it's not necessarily a win if child poverty levels improve in one neighborhood simply because poorer residents are being priced out of that community."
Evanston's collaboration with the City Health Dashboard continues to grow. Meyer recently joined the Dashboard's Advisory Board, where she contributes insights into how the Dashboard can be accessible and responsive to the needs of municipal governments. Meyer emphasizes, "This work is possible for Evanston because City Health Dashboard data has been made so available and transparent. It honors that everyone deserves access to local health information. City Health Dashboard supports the democratization of data, so that communities can advance data-driven change, and move the needle on inequity."