Topic: Equity
The Chicago Department of Public Health’s Cumulative Impact Assessment is a citywide initiative to measure how multiple environmental burdens and social stressors combine to affect health across Chicago neighborhoods. Co-designed with community organizations through an Environmental Equity Working Group, the assessment compiles data on pollution sources, health outcomes, and vulnerability factors to identify communities facing the greatest cumulative impacts. Its findings and recommendations are intended to guide policies on land use, zoning, permitting, enforcement, transportation planning, and other decisions, and it serves as a foundation for Chicago’s broader Environmental Justice Action Plan and proposed cumulative impacts ordinance.
The CDC PLACES (Local Data for Better Health) tool is a free, interactive web resource that provides model-based estimates of chronic disease, health behaviors, preventive practices, disabilities, and related social factors for small geographic areas across the United States. It offers consistent data for all counties, most cities and towns (places), census tracts, and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas, allowing users to view, map, and download neighborhood-level health information to identify local health problems, disparities, and needs and to guide targeted public health planning and policy.
