SANTA CRUZ >> Santa Cruz County public health officials have compiled a trove of local data that will be used to shape care in the years ahead.

The county’s Public Health Division has shared the 2024 Community Health Assessment, a synthesis of various health-related studies, reports and dialogues that paint a picture of how county residents are faring overall and where there is room for improvement. The information that was collected includes identification of risk factors, quality of life, social determinants of health, health inequities, mortality and morbidity rates.

The report has been posted online at the interactive county data platform datasharescc.org.

“What we did was we took a look at what was already out there, like, what had other folks done as far as assessing,” Santa Cruz County Deputy Director of Public Health Pam Conelly told the Sentinel, “because oftentimes these communities get tapped over and over again for filling out surveys or doing focus groups or interviews and what we really wanted to do with this (assessment) was look at what was available — what data have other folks gathered — and then to fill those gaps with key informant interviews and focus groups.”

After engaging in that comprehensive appraisal of the local data landscape, Conelly and her team derived 15 health indicators and shared them with a group of engaged community members and community-based organizations, asking them to boil the list down to four improvement priorities that could be used to guide future work and initiatives.

Those priorities are:

• Access to health care.

• Child and adolescent health.

• Housing security and burden.

• Mental health and disorders.

“If you zoom way out as far as Santa Cruz County and the state, or Santa Cruz County and the nation, we’re doing well,” said Conelly, referring to a survey from last year that found Santa Cruz County ranked No. 9 out of 58 counties in the state for health outcomes. “But we can’t let that take away from communities that are experiencing health disparity.”

In March, health care leaders from several county nonprofits and government agencies presented the 2024 Health Rankings and Roadmaps report that compared health outcomes using quantitative data from 2021 and 2022 in counties across the nation. Overall, Santa Cruz County was about average when compared to other California counties and above average when put up against counties across the nation.

However, when that data was disaggregated, it revealed disparities among local residents depending on their socio-economic background or ZIP code.

For instance, Watsonville Community Hospital CEO Stephen Gray said that according to the report’s data, the county’s population without health insurance was at 8%. Similarly, Mid- and North County areas were at 5% and 7%, respectively, but the uninsured rate in South County sat at 20.5%. The same disparities applied to other health categories and indicators including child poverty and diabetes, said Gray.

“The most important number that dictates your overall health outcome is your ZIP code or even more specifically your street address,” Gray said during the March meeting.

Conelly said that, in all, about 15 local reports and studies were included in this latest Community Health Assessment, such as those from First 5 Santa Cruz County, Oral Health Access Santa Cruz County and the Black Health Matters Initiative.

The last Community Health Assessment was completed in 2017, Conelly said, and while the health summaries typically come out every three years, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic threw off that schedule, making this latest report the first in seven years.

The next step, added Conelly, is creation of the Community Health Improvement Plan, which engages residents and health care nonprofits to form a cohesive strategy for addressing the four identified priority needs, emphasizing the importance of hearing from community members whose voices have traditionally been absent from these discussions. That process will kick off early next year, and those who are interested in participating can monitor for updates on the DataShare Santa Cruz County website.

“This is the community’s data. This is data the reflects the community’s health,” said Conelly. “It belongs to the community; the community needs to have access to it and have opportunities to participate in what happens next.”