A County-Level Health Index to Capture Geographic Variation in Health Conditions in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Introduction: Individual health is influenced by multiple, potentially correlated factors including healthcare availability, community context, and socioeconomic factors. To measure the health changes at county-levels across North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, a measure of relative health, health index, was developed incorporating multiple indicators from domains of health conditions, health behaviors, and social determinants.

Methods: We combined data from all 206 counties in the aforementioned three states for the years 2008-2012 from multiple data sources.