The Greater New Haven Community Index 2013

Benchmarking the People, Economic Opportunity, Health Needs, and Civic Life of Our Region

The purpose of the Greater New Haven Community Index is to start a discussion about the opportunities and challenges facing metropolitan New Haven. It focuses on health, demography, education, economics, and civic life and is rich in maps and graphs (an example of which is below). The document was published by DataHaven with the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, New Haven Health Department, Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale School of Public Health.

Chapter 4 brings together a wealth of data to describe health in greater New Haven.

Health Highlights:

• Greater New Haven is a relatively healthy region but has the potential to be even healthier.
• As with much of the rest of the country, being overweight poses a health challenge throughout the region.
• Illnesses, like diabetes and asthma, are not evenly distributed geographically.
• Injuries from violence and infant mortality both result in a great loss of human potential particularly for Black and Hispanic New Haven residents.
• Many people in the region smoke regularly. The good news is that the majority of daily smokers have tried to quit in the last year.
• A large number of people in New Haven are at risk of cirrhosis because they have chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Some of them are infected with HCV and don’t know it.

If you would like to read more please go to www.ctdatahaven.org/communityindex.