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Health Statistics of 500 US Cities – Map and Sortable Table

57 points by hrodriguez 10y ago

snowpanda 10y ago
Wow the bay area scores pretty bad on all of them.
- overcast 10y ago
  You've got a huge concentration of people value sitting behind a computer for sixteen hours a day.
notadoc 10y ago
Obesity is through the roof, people over eat like crazy and don't move around enough. How much of our nations skyrocketing health care costs are directly and indirectly related to obesity? Probably a stunningly high percentage.
- Selfcommit 10y ago
  You are making an assumption that obesity is because people overeat, and that "moving around" is somehow a counter to that. Have you considered the amount of sugar found in virtually all SAD based food could be the problem? (Setting aside the movement debate and the false premise it creates about energy in vs energy out).
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    SAD=standard American diet
  - dvdhnt 10y ago
    This. There was a study I'm struggling to find at the moment, that I saw via HN, that claimed childhood obesity is more dependent on what people eat than when they eat it or how much.
    - killjoywashere 10y ago
      Childhood obesity, like all obesity, is most definitely about calories in vs calories out. However, it is also true that fructose (one half of sucrose), doesn't induce any of the body's satiety responses. A second issue is salt, which induces thirst, which induced consumption of fluids. Solving that problem with water drops the osmolarity, which decreases the satiety signals by way of diluting the interstitium. Solving the thirst problem with beer, soda, milk, etc, maintains the osmolarity of the interstitium, but does so by way of increasing the blood glucose. Overall, it's 90% eat less, 10% exercise more. But the exercise more is also critically important for increasing norepinephrine, which improves focus, willpower, concentration, whatever the amalgam of those words are that represents the effect of norepi. Having seen really horrible outcomes in kids, please, please, give up this idea that calories in doesn't need to equal calories out. It does. Always.
  - jlarocco 10y ago
    Too much sugar is definitely a problem, but if obesity were solely due to sugar in "virtually all SAD based food" then everybody would be obese across the board. That's not what the data shows, though. And even if sugar were the main factor, OP's post would still be technically correct, because the underlying problem would be overeating foods with sugar, possibly in addition to overeating other foods. This may be an unpopular view, but there's no getting around the fact that obesity in most adults is caused by poor decision making around food and exercise.
    - mjevans 10y ago
      The last time I bought 'healthy' food, I couldn't use it before it's shelf life expired. Smaller portions are prohibitively expensive (it costs less for me to get something that looks better, tastes better, and has more variety going out to eat). It also isn't cost effective for me to make the time to make my own food, even ignoring the cost of the ingredients; aside from simple things that use mostly non-perishable ingredients. However, even going out to eat, the incentive to buy in bulk /there/ exists too. Purchase of a single meal that should fill someone up for a day has a substantial discount over getting what should be a properly sized portion for a small regular meal. For all sides, the market incentives push towards over-consumption which is why we have the outcome we do. I recall hearing that the cost of labor was actually one of the primary factors in meal price.
      - jlarocco 10y ago
        Are those not all personal choices? You're choosing cheap, easy, and convenient over healthy. IME eating healthy isn't particularly expensive or difficult, but it does require more planning and consideration than just eating what's convenient.
      - tomjen3 10y ago
        There is nothing wrong with buying in bulk, and cooking in bulk is a good way to save money and time: just put the rest in the freezer.
        10y ago
  - sn9 10y ago
    Increasing activity increases calories burned, which can help produce a caloric deficit which will lead to weight loss. Obesity is literally impossible without being in a caloric surplus over the long term. Added sugar contributes to the problem, in that it is not very satiating so it makes it easier to overeat, but you can easily lose weight on a high sugar diet so long as a caloric deficit is maintained. The actual physiology is well-understood. The only problem is changing habits and behaviors, which can be difficult but is certainly not even close to impossible.
  - xinyhn 10y ago
    Interesting study on activity levels and energy expenditure. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040503 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna... Abstract Western lifestyles differ markedly from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and these differences in diet and activity level are often implicated in the global obesity pandemic. However, few physiological data for hunter-gatherer populations are available to test these models of obesity. In this study, we used the doubly-labeled water method to measure total daily energy expenditure (kCal/day) in Hadza hunter-gatherers to test whether foragers expend more energy each day than their Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level, PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size. The metabolic cost of walking (kcal kg−1 m−1) and resting (kcal kg−1 s−1) were also similar among Hadza and Western groups. The similarity in metabolic rates across a broad range of cultures challenges current models of obesity suggesting that Western lifestyles lead to decreased energy expenditure. We hypothesize that human daily energy expenditure may be an evolved physiological trait largely independent of cultural differences.
digitalzombie 10y ago
Ugh... ESRI, is the one reason why I didn't get into Geography. I wanted get into datascience that lean toward maps but seeing the monopoly that ESRI has and no open source alternative it was clear, in my opinion, that that market growth is will be slow and the potential will not be as great. I'm leaning toward medical data and NLP now.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  OpenStreetMap would be fine as the base map there. There's nice clean tiles available from several providers. And while I am not experienced with them, I believe both Leaflet and OpenLayers would work well to build the interactive part of the map.
  - everybodyknows 10y ago
    Example of a data set visualized with Leaflet by a US Federal agency: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ Suffers from a few scaling pains.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  I don't quite understand what you're saying. Using proprietary or open source software isn't a determining factor in whether the industry using it will grow quickly or slowly. For example, most computer animation software (Maya, SoftImage, ...) is closed source, but CGI in films and TV has experienced huge growth in the last 20 years. In any case, even though ESRI is the market leader, there's quite a bit of open source GIS software (GRSS, QGis, PostGis, etc.). Entrenched markets like that don't get "disrupted" by magic, it requires people to jump in and use the alternatives on real projects.
  - horsetranqs 10y ago
    ESRI has a lock on the government GIS business. Why? Governments have byzantine procurement processes designed to prevent self-dealing and malfeasance. This is a problem, because from whom will you procure PostGIS? From nobody. So you can't really use it on a government contract.
gregshap 10y ago
that spinner...
- horsetranqs 10y ago
  For me it just never stops spinning.
Exuma 10y ago
I always wonder how it's humanly possible to make a website so hideous, ugly, and janky. I mean really... I think it would actually be difficult to make something as nasty as this site. It's a special skill to find the worst looking gif in existence, icons, text, colors, margins, 1% JPG images...........
- time4tea 10y ago
  Sweet! I reckon you could get the data easy. Reimplement and Show HN!!!
rodionos 10y ago
CDC 500 Stats in tabular format. Top-25 by each metric: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/1e6f3425 https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/1e6f3425 As for obesity, Philadelphia no longer keeps the crown: | city | state | metric | population | |--------------|--------------|--------|------------| | Dallas | Texas | 27.6 | 1197816 | | Houston | Texas | 27.3 | 2099451 | | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 27.2 | 1526006 | | San Antonio | Texas | 26.1 | 1327407 | | Chicago | Illinois | 25.4 | 2695598 | | Phoenix | Arizona | 23.8 | 1445632 | | Los Angeles | California | 21.1 | 3792621 | | New York | New York | 21.1 | 8175133 | | San Diego | California | 18.0 | 1307402 | > SELECT t1.tags.cityname as 'city', t1.tags.statedesc as 'state', t1.value as 'metric', t2.value as 'population' FROM 'cdc.nccd.data_value' t1 JOIN 'cdc.nccd.populationcount' t2 WHERE t1.tags.short_question_text = 'Obesity' AND t1.tags.datavaluetypeid = 'CrdPrv' AND t2.value > 1000000 ORDER BY t1.value DESC

57 points by hrodriguez 10y ago

snowpanda 10y ago

Wow the bay area scores pretty bad on all of them.

overcast 10y ago
You've got a huge concentration of people value sitting behind a computer for sixteen hours a day.

notadoc 10y ago

Obesity is through the roof, people over eat like crazy and don't move around enough. How much of our nations skyrocketing health care costs are directly and indirectly related to obesity? Probably a stunningly high percentage.

Selfcommit 10y ago
You are making an assumption that obesity is because people overeat, and that "moving around" is somehow a counter to that. Have you considered the amount of sugar found in virtually all SAD based food could be the problem? (Setting aside the movement debate and the false premise it creates about energy in vs energy out).
- maxerickson 10y ago
  SAD=standard American diet
- dvdhnt 10y ago
  This. There was a study I'm struggling to find at the moment, that I saw via HN, that claimed childhood obesity is more dependent on what people eat than when they eat it or how much.
  - killjoywashere 10y ago
    Childhood obesity, like all obesity, is most definitely about calories in vs calories out. However, it is also true that fructose (one half of sucrose), doesn't induce any of the body's satiety responses. A second issue is salt, which induces thirst, which induced consumption of fluids. Solving that problem with water drops the osmolarity, which decreases the satiety signals by way of diluting the interstitium. Solving the thirst problem with beer, soda, milk, etc, maintains the osmolarity of the interstitium, but does so by way of increasing the blood glucose. Overall, it's 90% eat less, 10% exercise more. But the exercise more is also critically important for increasing norepinephrine, which improves focus, willpower, concentration, whatever the amalgam of those words are that represents the effect of norepi. Having seen really horrible outcomes in kids, please, please, give up this idea that calories in doesn't need to equal calories out. It does. Always.
- jlarocco 10y ago
  Too much sugar is definitely a problem, but if obesity were solely due to sugar in "virtually all SAD based food" then everybody would be obese across the board. That's not what the data shows, though. And even if sugar were the main factor, OP's post would still be technically correct, because the underlying problem would be overeating foods with sugar, possibly in addition to overeating other foods. This may be an unpopular view, but there's no getting around the fact that obesity in most adults is caused by poor decision making around food and exercise.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    The last time I bought 'healthy' food, I couldn't use it before it's shelf life expired. Smaller portions are prohibitively expensive (it costs less for me to get something that looks better, tastes better, and has more variety going out to eat). It also isn't cost effective for me to make the time to make my own food, even ignoring the cost of the ingredients; aside from simple things that use mostly non-perishable ingredients. However, even going out to eat, the incentive to buy in bulk /there/ exists too. Purchase of a single meal that should fill someone up for a day has a substantial discount over getting what should be a properly sized portion for a small regular meal. For all sides, the market incentives push towards over-consumption which is why we have the outcome we do. I recall hearing that the cost of labor was actually one of the primary factors in meal price.
    - jlarocco 10y ago
      Are those not all personal choices? You're choosing cheap, easy, and convenient over healthy. IME eating healthy isn't particularly expensive or difficult, but it does require more planning and consideration than just eating what's convenient.
    - tomjen3 10y ago
      There is nothing wrong with buying in bulk, and cooking in bulk is a good way to save money and time: just put the rest in the freezer.
      - 10y ago
- sn9 10y ago
  Increasing activity increases calories burned, which can help produce a caloric deficit which will lead to weight loss. Obesity is literally impossible without being in a caloric surplus over the long term. Added sugar contributes to the problem, in that it is not very satiating so it makes it easier to overeat, but you can easily lose weight on a high sugar diet so long as a caloric deficit is maintained. The actual physiology is well-understood. The only problem is changing habits and behaviors, which can be difficult but is certainly not even close to impossible.
- xinyhn 10y ago
  Interesting study on activity levels and energy expenditure. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040503 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna... Abstract Western lifestyles differ markedly from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, and these differences in diet and activity level are often implicated in the global obesity pandemic. However, few physiological data for hunter-gatherer populations are available to test these models of obesity. In this study, we used the doubly-labeled water method to measure total daily energy expenditure (kCal/day) in Hadza hunter-gatherers to test whether foragers expend more energy each day than their Western counterparts. As expected, physical activity level, PAL, was greater among Hadza foragers than among Westerners. Nonetheless, average daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners after controlling for body size. The metabolic cost of walking (kcal kg−1 m−1) and resting (kcal kg−1 s−1) were also similar among Hadza and Western groups. The similarity in metabolic rates across a broad range of cultures challenges current models of obesity suggesting that Western lifestyles lead to decreased energy expenditure. We hypothesize that human daily energy expenditure may be an evolved physiological trait largely independent of cultural differences.

digitalzombie 10y ago

Ugh... ESRI, is the one reason why I didn't get into Geography. I wanted get into datascience that lean toward maps but seeing the monopoly that ESRI has and no open source alternative it was clear, in my opinion, that that market growth is will be slow and the potential will not be as great. I'm leaning toward medical data and NLP now.

maxerickson 10y ago
OpenStreetMap would be fine as the base map there. There's nice clean tiles available from several providers. And while I am not experienced with them, I believe both Leaflet and OpenLayers would work well to build the interactive part of the map.
- everybodyknows 10y ago
  Example of a data set visualized with Leaflet by a US Federal agency: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ Suffers from a few scaling pains.
jlarocco 10y ago
I don't quite understand what you're saying. Using proprietary or open source software isn't a determining factor in whether the industry using it will grow quickly or slowly. For example, most computer animation software (Maya, SoftImage, ...) is closed source, but CGI in films and TV has experienced huge growth in the last 20 years. In any case, even though ESRI is the market leader, there's quite a bit of open source GIS software (GRSS, QGis, PostGis, etc.). Entrenched markets like that don't get "disrupted" by magic, it requires people to jump in and use the alternatives on real projects.
- horsetranqs 10y ago
  ESRI has a lock on the government GIS business. Why? Governments have byzantine procurement processes designed to prevent self-dealing and malfeasance. This is a problem, because from whom will you procure PostGIS? From nobody. So you can't really use it on a government contract.

gregshap 10y ago

that spinner...

horsetranqs 10y ago
For me it just never stops spinning.

Exuma 10y ago

I always wonder how it's humanly possible to make a website so hideous, ugly, and janky. I mean really... I think it would actually be difficult to make something as nasty as this site. It's a special skill to find the worst looking gif in existence, icons, text, colors, margins, 1% JPG images...........

time4tea 10y ago
Sweet! I reckon you could get the data easy. Reimplement and Show HN!!!

rodionos 10y ago

CDC 500 Stats in tabular format. Top-25 by each metric: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/1e6f3425 https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/1e6f3425 As for obesity, Philadelphia no longer keeps the crown: | city | state | metric | population | |--------------|--------------|--------|------------| | Dallas | Texas | 27.6 | 1197816 | | Houston | Texas | 27.3 | 2099451 | | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 27.2 | 1526006 | | San Antonio | Texas | 26.1 | 1327407 | | Chicago | Illinois | 25.4 | 2695598 | | Phoenix | Arizona | 23.8 | 1445632 | | Los Angeles | California | 21.1 | 3792621 | | New York | New York | 21.1 | 8175133 | | San Diego | California | 18.0 | 1307402 | > SELECT t1.tags.cityname as 'city', t1.tags.statedesc as 'state', t1.value as 'metric', t2.value as 'population' FROM 'cdc.nccd.data_value' t1 JOIN 'cdc.nccd.populationcount' t2 WHERE t1.tags.short_question_text = 'Obesity' AND t1.tags.datavaluetypeid = 'CrdPrv' AND t2.value > 1000000 ORDER BY t1.value DESC