Advertisement Monroe and Vernon counties have heart disease death rates higher than the state average. Teen pregnancy and smoking rates among pregnant women for Crawford County are higher than the state average.
This is only a small part of the data available on the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium’s Scorecard Web site, one of the first of its kind in the country.
Since March 2007, the consortium has been operating the scorecard online at www.lmhscscorecard.com — where visitors can find health and demographic information for 20 counties, including La Crosse, Vernon, Monroe, Jackson, Trempealeau, Crawford and Juneau in Wisconsin; Houston and Winona in Minnesota; and Allamakee in Iowa.
The data will show if counties are above or below the state and national averages and government goals in areas such as deaths, accidents, diseases and other medical conditions.
As chairwoman of the La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium’s Population Health Committee, Brenda Rooney has been responsible for developing the project.
“I’ve not seen anything like the scorecard in this country,” said Rooney, medical director for community and preventive care services at Gundersen Lutheran. “There has been some interest from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). People say they haven’t seen anything like this.”
Rooney said the data is important to help health officials identify a problem or trend before they can address a solution.
“When it comes to health improvement, this data will help decide what you need to focus your energy on, instead of pet projects or what’s the flavor of the day,” Rooney said.
“You have to know the extent of the problem before you can address it,” she said.
Rooney said community and health officials can use the information to develop projects, write grants and conduct research. The consortium will use the information to help counties set priorities in addressing various health problems in the La Crosse area, she said.
“The scorecard is also a great source for the general public,” Rooney said. “You could have someone whose three friends got breast cancer and wants to know the breast cancer rates in their county.”
The La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium has gathered data from existing public state and national sources, she said. The Website has a trend report for each county from 1998 to 2006.
“I like we’re not developing new data, but it has been information which has been hard to find, or one got lost trying to find it,” Rooney said.
The report includes:
— U.S. census data.
— Accident indicators: Deaths, emergency room visits, hospitalizations and alcohol-related incidents.
— Cancer indicators: deaths, prevalence.
— Health and behavioral measures: Years of potential life lost and prevalence of smoking, obesity, binge drinking, etc.
— Heart disease indicators: Deaths, hospitalizations and risk factors.
— Infectious diseases: Deaths, hospitalizations and incidence.
— Leading causes of death.
— Maternal and child health.
— Mental health indicators.
— Sexually-transmitted infections.
— Socioeconomic factors.
— Substance use/abuse.
On the Web site, Rooney said three counties can be compared at the same time. With some other data, one can pull up a graph. Each health topic links to the original data.
There are also links to other Web sites to find other data, Rooney said.
“We don’t have a lot of behavior data yet like alcoholism because it’s not readily available, and we don’t have a lot of hospital/cost data,” Rooney said. “But that’s in the future.”
This summer, Rooney plans to add data from the burden of injury report for alcohol and for physical inactivity and obesity.
“The scorecard will be an important tool to improve the health of our communities,” Rooney said.
Terry Rindfleisch can be reached at trindfleisch@lacrossetribune.com, or (608) 791-8227
HOW TO USE THE SCORECARD
Go to the Web site at www.lmhscscorecard.com
Click on “To Scorecard” button, and then click on county or state name.
For demographic data, such as number of people older than 65, select the “Demographic/Census Data” report. Census data is only available every five years.
For health statistics, go to “Health Statistics” report. Select a year, and note health data usually is lagging by at least one year, so pick 2006 for the most recent data. Then click on “Submit.”
If you want to see how a county compares statistically to the state, nation or target goals set by the government (Healthy People 2010), go to the bottom of the page to the report called “Benchmark Report.” You can select a year and a benchmark.
You also can compare a selected county against up to two other counties, states or national data at the same time. You also can compare a county, state or national data side-by-side for up to three years.
