Application of Geographic Information Systems to Address Chronic Disease Priorities: Experiences in State and Local Health Departments

A Dynamic Visualization Tool of Local Trends in Heart Disease and Stroke Mortality in the United States

Efforts in the US to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease (CVD) contributed to large decreases in death rates for decades; however, in the last decade, progress has stalled, and in many counties, CVD death rates have increased. Because of these increases, there is heightened urgency to disseminate high-quality data on the temporal trends in CVD mortality. The Local Trends in Heart Disease and Stroke Mortality Dashboard is an online, interactive visualization of US county-level death rates and trends for several CVD outcomes across stratifications of age, race and ethnicity, and sex. This powerful visualization tool generates national maps of death rates and trends, state maps of death rates and trends, county-level line plots of annual death rates, and bar charts of percentage changes. County-level death rates and trends were estimated by applying a Bayesian spatiotemporal model to data obtained from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics and US Census bridged-race intercensal estimates for the years 1999 through 2019. The Local Trends in Heart Disease and Stroke Mortality Dashboard makes it easy for public health practitioners, health care providers, and community leaders to monitor county-level spatiotemporal trends in CVD mortality by age group, race and ethnicity, and sex and provides key information for identifying and addressing local health inequities in CVD mortality trends.