Seeing is believing: Harnessing the power of maps to visualize health

Where we live matters to our health. Revealing patterns of health through data and maps provides another way to communicate opportunities for everyone to live long and live well.

The 2024 County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR&R) data are now available in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, an online collection of geographic information. The Living Atlas offers a library of place-based datasets and interactive maps.  

Find CHR&R data in Living Atlas by searching for “County Health Rankings.” Data layers are grouped by publication year. Users can combine the 2024 CHR&R Living Atlas content with their own organization’s data to create new maps to illustrate patterns and relationships in the data.

Our 2024 National Findings Report (NFR) is an example of how CHR&R data can be mapped to show where opportunities and barriers to health exist. The NFR specifically illustrates patterns in life expectancy, voter turnout and the resources that shape access to information. The NFR uses multiple datasets and ArcGIS StoryMaps to give readers a guided experience through place-based patterns of access to resources within historical context. For example, after seeing a map of resources that shape access to information, readers can continue scrolling to see a layer that highlights access to information in the Black Belt, a region of long-standing discrimination and disinvestment.  

Through a partnership with the Living Atlas team, CHR&R data are updated annually to enable mapping of health factors and outcomes in counties across the country. For the first time this year, CHR&R shared the Annual Data Release directly to the Living Atlas. We join federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as direct contributors to the Living Atlas.

CHR&R data layers from 2018 to 2024 have been viewed more than 3.2 million times. CHR&R layers are also included in more than 40 ArcGIS web maps that show national, state and county data.