Gallup Health Data vs. CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week released a number of valuable health findings. Among them are insights into health disparities in the United States, an update on the prevalence of asthma, and a report on how this flu season is trending.

The CDC has been monitoring and providing data on Americans’ health for years. The historical and comprehensive nature of CDC data provides an important piece of the story of health in the United States.

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index data completes and provides constant updates to the story of Americans’ health -- with data that is even more up to date. Gallup’s nationwide daily tracking of Americans’ physical, emotional, and financial health, as well as their access to healthcare, enables leaders to access updates on the health situation of individuals, states, cities, and congressional districts on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.

This up-to-date and in-depth data empowers governmental and business leaders to make the smartest possible health-related policy and budget choices, based on the best intelligence available.

The massive size of the Well-Being Index -- initiated in January 2008, Gallup’s database now includes surveys of more than 1 million Americans -- also allows for deep dives into the data to uncover who is doing the best, who is doing the worst, and why.

The CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report, 2011 can be used as one example of how Gallup data compares with the CDC. The CDC report reviews health disparities in the United States by sex, race and ethnicity, income, and other categories. The most recent data the report provides is from 2009, although many of the trends discussed are based on older data.

Gallup in October 2010 was already out with 2010 data on income health disparities across 25 different metrics of wellbeing based on more than 200,000 surveys. And we will later this month publish full-year 2010 data on chronic conditions in the United States by age, race, gender, income, and region. You can check out our report from last year on this topic here.

Also, for the latest on smoking habits -- another key trend CDC reviewed in their report -- see Gallup’s May 2010 article on smoking by every single age, by gender and age, and by race and age.

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