An excellent story on the state’s nonprofit health website C-HIT.org (Connecticut Health Investigative Team) on the Community Health Index, a way to measure an area’s health.
Writer Magaly Olivero says the nonprofit Connecticut Association of Directors of Health developed the index “to measure seven ‘social determinants’ – economic security, employment, housing, education, community safety, civic involvement and environmental quality – and their correlation to 13 specific health outcomes, including cancer, respiratory illness, childhood illness, kidney and liver disease.”
As the numerous parts of the national Affordable Care Act start being put into place, the index becomes a tool to quantify what is more or less known: that people living in poverty in general have more challenges to attaining a healthy life.