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CDC PLACES: Local Data for Better Health
Model-based prevalence estimates for 40 chronic disease, prevention, and health-related measures at county, place, census tract, and ZIP Code tabulation area level.
About the data
CDC's Division of Population Health, Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch produces PLACES by small area estimation rather than direct measurement: a multilevel model fitted to survey responses is applied to 2020 census block-level population counts and aggregated up to each geography. The inputs it combines are BRFSS 2022 data (2021 for the four measures the survey collects every other year), Census Bureau 2020 population data, and ACS 2018-2022 estimates. Because the model borrows strength from demographics, it can't detect effects of local interventions, and CDC cautions against using these estimates for program or policy evaluation.
What's included
The 2024 release covers 40 measures for the whole United States, and the ones people reach for first, high blood pressure, cholesterol screening, disability, and general health status, are here alongside preventive service use, health risk behaviors, and health-related social needs. Each release ships eight datasets: four geographic levels (county, place, census tract, and ZIP Code tabulation area) in both an open data and a GIS friendly format. A row is one geography and one measure, keyed on county FIPS, place FIPS, tract GEOID, or ZCTA.
Why we offer this
Most researchers pulling PLACES aren't studying chronic disease itself. They're holding local health burden constant while they study something else: a hospital closure, neighborhood change, an employment shock. What makes it usable for that is uniform national coverage at a single small geography, tract or ZCTA, modelled the same way in every state, which health department series assembled jurisdiction by jurisdiction rarely are. It's worth knowing that the sub-county grain comes from the model, not from anyone surveying those tracts directly.
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