America’s Health Rankings sat down with leaders in the public health space to discuss how access to actionable data helps them to address key health challenges. To hear the rest of our conversations, watch the full video here.
Anna Schenck, PhD, is a Professor of the Practice and Director of the Public Health Leadership program at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health. Schenck has extensive experience in measure development and assessing the scientific soundness of measures. She has served on numerous national measurement panels on various topics, including hospice and palliative care, cancer methods, senior health and community preparedness.
How do you use America’s Health Rankings?
I use the platform in a couple of different ways. The first is when I have a specific question — if somebody comes to me and asks me about something I don’t have the answer to. It’s a wonderful place to go look because all the data is there. No matter what they ask me, I’m likely to find something that’s relevant to their question.
Another way that I’ve used it is when I want to deeply understand an issue. If I want to get a lay of the land to best understand the factors that are influencing a condition that I’m concerned about or want to do some research on, I can use America’s Health Rankings to gain a full understanding of the issue.
How has America’s Health Rankings benefitted your students?
I’ve had the joy over the last 10 years of being able to work with students who use America’s Health Rankings data to investigate a topic of interest to them. When they use the platform, you can see the lightbulbs turn on when they understand the concepts they’ve been studying and discover the passion of being able to use data to try to advocate for things that they find important.
How have you seen America’s Health Rankings influence policy?
A couple years ago, I had the opportunity to go before the legislature in North Carolina to present information on infant mortality. America’s Health Rankings allowed me to pool comparative state-level data. When I went before the legislature, I was able to tell them about the rates of infant mortality and the leading conditions that influenced infant mortality, in an effort to advocate for additional funding. This was in a very lean year, and due to the America’s Health Rankings data we presented, we were successful in getting additional funding.
How does the platform make finding data easier?
The platform helps to break down what is an enormous issue; if you just think about the health of the nation, it can be hard to wrap your brain around.
Additionally, if you’re talking to someone that has a special interest group, they often only want to hear about information relative to them. The special issues where they focus on particular populations like seniors or women and children, or those who’ve served, allows both the user and the consumer of the data to have the opportunity to go a little bit deeper because there are more variables there.
What makes America’s Health Rankings stand out?
In another life I was a health educator and my very first job was to describe the state of care for elders in our community. Because the appropriate data was not available, I had to take a look at death certificates; that was the only data I could find. Since we now have so much more information that’s further upstream, we don’t have to wait to understand issues such as the leading causes of death. We can see, what are some of the causes of hospitalization? What are some of the illnesses, and then what are some of the behavioral, clinical, social or physical factors that are involved? It allows you to identify areas where you can improve things as opposed to waiting to the end when it’s too late.
How is America’s Health Rankings an essential public health tool?
In public health, we talk about the whole population. The way we understand health is to look for variation in person, place and time. That means looking for variations by characteristics of people: their age, ethnicity, gender, place, geography. Over time you can see if something is changing. That variation is what helps us understand where things are going well, and where they’re not. America’s Health Rankings provides those types of variables, and you can investigate by person, place, and time to see where there are areas that might need improvement versus the areas we can look to as an example of a place doing a good job.
The nice thing about America’s Health Rankings is, it’s a treasure trove. It brings all the data together in one place. All the complicated stuff has already been done. It’s interpretable for someone who doesn’t have a scientific background. That’s what makes it so valuable.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.