LibGuides: PBHL-P506 Public Health and Community-Focused Leadership: Home

Guide Contents

This guide is designed to help you find data and statistics for your community health assessment.

Need help? Contact the health sciences librarian (see email and appointment scheduler on the left side).

Look over the resources on each of these pages:

Data Sources
Data sources and mapping tools for demographic, social factors, health outcomes, and health conditions
Social Determinants of Health
List of determinants of health, including search terms.
Scholarly Articles
List of public health and medical research databases. Contain peer-reviewed literature.
Find the Full Text
Struggling to find the full-text of an article? Use this search tool to locate the PDF.
Advanced Google Searching
Learn how to strategically search Google to locate reports and data
APA Citations
Information on APA citations
Zotero
How to set-up and use Zotero to generate citations and organize your references.,

Benchmark your data against the state, U.S. or even other counties. The data by itself does not show the whole story.
Make sure to find data that is as local to your area as possible to ensure relevance.
Carefully consider the implications of the data. Consider why might this be.
Be consistent with your citations. Include URLs, and make sure to look at APA guidelines or use a citation manager (Zotero) to generate citations for you. Without a URL, citations look like they are AI-generated.

Consider looking for sources of data on these categories:

Hospital: finances, performance, quality of care outcomes
Population: demographics, race and ethnicity, income, insurance
Geographic: housing, environmental landscape
Health status: overall health outcomes, key disparities, disability rates, leading causes of death, medically underserved areas
Access and utilization of health services: vaccination rates, insurance rates, emergency department visits, provider-to-patient ratios
Health behaviors: physical activity, obesity, smoking, STIs, substance use,
Social and environmental factors: context for behaviors such as political influence on health policy, built environment (e.g., food swamps or deserts), immigration, crime, education, housing, etc.