Research Finding

Where You Live Explains 28% of Your Health

Our analysis of 54,000+ census tracts reveals geography alone explains more health variance than income, education, or access combined. But some communities defy prediction—with outcomes far better than their circumstances suggest.

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54,563 Census Tracts
50 States + DC
220M+ People
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Key Finding

College Towns vs Prison Towns: A 4 SD Health Divide

Communities built around education show +2.95 resilience. Communities built around incarceration show -0.98. Same country, same healthcare system—4 standard deviations apart.

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Positive Outliers

Highest resilience scores

Tracts with health outcomes significantly better than predicted by socioeconomic factors.

Top 1%
Louisiana
2,179 residents
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Top 1%
South Carolina
1,562 residents
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Top 1%
Ohio
3,290 residents
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Top 1%
North Carolina
419 residents
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Top 1%
North Carolina
2,254 residents
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Top 1%
Ohio
5,201 residents
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Research Insights

What We've Learned

99.7%

Stable Health Levels

Community health levels are remarkably consistent year-to-year. The factors that make communities resilient are deeply structural.

28%

Geographic Variation

Geography alone explains over a quarter of health outcome variance. Where you live matters as much as how you live.

r = -0.72

Burden Correlation

Strong inverse relationship between community burden and resilience. Communities facing the most challenges often show the least resilience.

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Who uses this data

Researchers

Validated tract-level resilience scores with full methodology documentation and API access for large-scale analysis.

Journalists

Story-ready data with state and county comparisons. Find the resilience outliers in your coverage area.

Policy Analysts

Evidence for place-based interventions. Identify communities with successful health outcomes despite economic challenges.

Open Access

Use This Data in Your Work

This dataset is free for academic research, journalism, and policy analysis. No registration required. Please cite when publishing.

Community Resilience Mapping Project (2026). Census tract-level health resilience scores for the United States. https://odds.health
Browse & Download API Documentation