New Congress, New Data: Updates to the Dashboard for 2025
The Congressional District Health Dashboard is excited to announce its first data release of 2025 – continuing its mission to provide actionable, reliable, and nonpartisan congressional district health data to policymakers and users from diverse sectors seeking to improve health.
This release includes:
Updated district boundaries and members to reflect the 119th Congress
Four new metrics, bringing the Dashboard’s total metric count to 40
New years of data for 32 metrics
New Congress
Prior to the 2024 election, new congressional district boundaries were adopted in five states – Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, and New York. Congressional district boundaries and metrics in these states have now been updated and recalculated on the Dashboard website to reflect the 119th Congress. These changes are also reflected in the District Facts section that includes information on each district’s population demographics, cities inside the district (if they are also available on the City Health Dashboard), and the district’s member of Congress.
New Metrics
Youth Not in Work or School
Familial support, positive peer connections, and a supportive and safe environment are important factors that help young people develop into independent healthy adults. Youth who do not experience these conditions may face difficulty in the transition to adulthood. Youths’ health and development has become an increasingly important issue across the country, as highlighted in the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.
The population measured in this metric is also commonly referred to as ‘disconnected youth’ and can include youth of different ages. On the Dashboard, this metric is calculated using data from the American Community Survey and measures the percentage of youth 16-19 years old who are neither working nor in school. It is available at the district and the census tract level and broken down by sex. Learn more about the Youth Not in Work or School metric.
Independent Living Difficulty
Independent Living Difficulty captures the percentage of adults who report difficulty doing errands alone because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition. As leaders assess local accessibility infrastructure and resources to support disabled community members, this metric can help illuminate where needs are greatest. The metric is calculated using data from the American Community Survey. It is available at the district and the census tract level and broken down by age. Learn more about the Independent Living Difficulty metric.
Food Insecurity
Access to adequate food is essential for individuals and communities to live healthy lives. Food insecurity, defined as limited or uncertain access to food, affects millions of households across the country, and is influenced by income, employment, race and ethnicity, disability status of household members, as well as local infrastructure, transportation, and the accessibility and affordability of food. Food insecurity is also linked to increased risk of adverse health outcomes such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, mental health disorders, and other chronic diseases. This new metric measures the percentage of adults who report they did not have enough food and did not have money to get more in the past year. This metric is calculated using data from the CDC’s PLACES Project and is available for 39 states. Learn more about the Food Insecurity metric.
Designated Primary Care Shortage Area
Over 100 million Americans lack access to a regular source of primary care, posing a significant public health challenge. Primary care reduces emergency room and hospital visits, improves population health outcomes, promotes health equity, and lowers health care expenditures. To address this challenge the Dashboard is adding the Designated Primary Care Shortage Area metric, which measures the percentage of the population living in an area designated as a primary care health professional shortage area (HPSA).
A HPSA is a designated area where there are not enough primary, dental, or mental health care providers to meet the health care needs of that area’s population. Designations are granted by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) following an application process and review. This new metric exclusively examines geographic HPSAs for primary care providers. It does not include dental or mental health care providers. Notably this measure represents areas that have applied for and received this designation; there may be under-resourced areas that are not included because they did not apply for the HPSA designation. This metric can help identify places within districts that are in a shortage area, empowering policymakers and others to advocate for resources and programs that promote healthcare access. Learn more about the Designated Primary Care Shortage Area metric.
New Years of Data
The Dashboard is excited to add new years of data for 32 metrics. This includes 10 metrics from the American Community Survey which now reflect data collected through 2023, and 10 metrics from the National Vital Statistics System and 9 from CDC’s PLACES Project which now reflect data collected through 2022.
See below for a full list of metrics with new years of data.
Improving the User Experience
New Data Download Feature
Users will now be able to easily download Dashboard data more efficiently. Using the redesigned data download feature, you will be able to choose which metrics and geographies you want to download without the need for detailed computer code. Data will be available at the census tract, congressional district, and state levels.
Keeping Measures Timely
Changes in Estimates
To improve data accuracy, the Dashboard updated population weights used when aggregating estimates from smaller geographies to the congressional district level by incorporating additional variables from the Decennial Census. As a result, some estimates may differ from prior releases, even in districts that were not re-drawn for the 119th Congress. Additional details can be found in the Technical Document, and the Dashboard always welcome your emails with questions at [email protected].
Removal of Preventive Services, 65+
Following recommendations in 2024 from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the CDC’s PLACES Project discontinued their ‘Preventive Services Use for Older Adults’ metric. The Dashboard has therefore also removed the Preventive Services, 65+ metric from the website, including all multi-year data. These data will also no longer be available for download. For more information about the removal of this metric reach out to us at [email protected].
Connect with Us
We are hosting our next Virtual Office Hours next Thursday, March 6th at 4:00pm ET, where we will be walking through the new updates. Register today.
