Dashboard highlights health data

Gwinnett, Newton, and Rockdale County Health Departments launched a new dashboard last week that offers a range of health data and highlights health disparities afflicting residents. Health department officials say they hope it gives local leaders the information needed to make decisions that affect public health.

The department’s data dashboard includes information on a variety of health issues facing residents of the three counties, everything from disease counts and causes of death to socioeconomic factors that affect health.

Data can be accessed for the three-county health district as a whole or each county individually and it can be accessed through the health departments’ website, www.gnrhealth.com/.

Cancer, heart disease and longterm health issues have claimed the lives of thousands of Gwinnett County residents.

“When we look at overall health in the community, you really have to go beyond the clinical picture,” said Alana Sulka, chief clinical officer of the health department. “Nutrition, exercise, walkability, transportation — all of those things build into the overall component of health.”

The website breaks down the rates of chronic and infectious disease, population changes, and “social determinants” that play a role in public health, like air quality, commute times, distance to grocery stores, transportation and walkability.

For instance, the majority of Gwinnett County residents live in close proximity to grocery stores, though walkability ranked low in the most recently published study. Commuters in the county have an average daily commute of 34 minutes, compared to a state average of 29 minutes.

The stress caused by commuting for long periods each week and the lack of access to build healthy habits can lead to poor health outcomes, Sulka said. By examining where and to what extent these issues exist, it will give elected officials, health care providers and community leaders the information needed to “work collaboratively to build that healthier community,” she said.

Gwinnett County’s status as the most diverse and second most populous county in Georgia presents a challenge when tackling public health issues, said County Commissioner Kirkland Carden. What works in one corner of the county make not work in another, he said.

Language barriers also present a challenge in addressing health issues and inequities, Carden said. More than 150 languages are spoken in the county, which require translations, he said.

“To do it justice, you really need to have a nuanced approach to public health for the part of Gwinnett County that we’re talking about,” Carden said.

The county is working with the Georgia Department of Transportation to find solutions for I-85 traffic congestion from I-985 down to the Perimeter. The county is also installing hundreds of cameras at traffic signals to analyze where to make improvements, Carden said.

Local officials are exploring bus rapid transit and more park-and-ride lots to get commuters to their destinations more quickly, Carden said.

County leaders are deciding how to allocate millions of federal relief dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. The data from the health department’s dashboard will help, Carden said.

“No one entity can work in a silo to create a healthy community,” Sulka said. “We look at this as a tool to weave everybody together so that we can build the best community that’s possible. In order to do that, we’ve got to have great collaboration and awareness. This is one more tool that allows for that.”