Where burdens stack across Ohio's 88 counties
The Ohio Prevention Data Atlas scores every county on how hardships overlap: income, housing, food, health care access and community conditions, read together instead of one at a time. Build a report, compare a county with its nearest neighbor, and turn the numbers into solutions.
Data feeds in this release
Every value is embedded in the site. County Health Rankings and CDC PLACES are national files, so each Ohio county also carries a percentile among all U.S. counties.
What you can do here
Report Builder
Grant, board, policy and community health needs reports for any county, measured against the nearest county or one you choose.
Start a report →County Map and Profiles
See all 88 counties by burden band on the composite, any domain, or a single indicator. Open a profile for every number and its source.
Open a profile →Solution Forge
Four steps: name the problem, map the intersections, weight the burdens, and forge cited pathways for as many counties as you choose.
Forge solutions →Where Ohio ranks among the states
The eight County Health Rankings measures where Ohio carries its heaviest burden compared with the 50 states and DC. Rank 1 is the heaviest burden in the nation.
Ohio in context
State-level measures carried for interpretation. They are not scored in county results.
Powered by iRISE™ · Intersectional Resilience Index for Social Equity
Report Builder
Choose a county, the report type, and how much each domain drives the problem you are working on. The report compares your county with its nearest county unless you pick others.
County Map
All 88 counties grouped into five burden bands. Choose the composite, a domain, or a single indicator. Select a county to see its numbers.
What the burden levels mean
Burden is how much hardship a county carries compared with the other 87 Ohio counties. Each county is ranked from 1 (heaviest) to 88 (lightest) and the ranks are split into five equal groups of about 18 counties.
Burden levels compare Ohio counties with each other, not with a national standard. A county in the lightest group can still have families going without food or housing; it means fewer of its residents face these hardships than in most of Ohio. Darker purple always means heavier burden, whichever layer you choose.
Counties A–Z
Every county in alphabetical order with its rank on this layer. Rank 1 carries the heaviest burden in Ohio.
County Profile
Every indicator
Both percentiles are adjusted so 0 is the heaviest burden and 100 the lightest. Ohio pctl compares the county with Ohio's 88 counties; US pctl compares it with every U.S. county that reports the measure.
Solution Forge
A guided, four-step instrument: name a social problem, map the intersecting identities, weigh the burdens, and forge ranked, evidence-based pathways at the individual, organizational and structural levels, with citations. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
Step 1 of 4 · Name the problem
0 words
Step 2 of 4 · Map the intersections
Who carries this burden where systems overlap? Name the intersecting identity axes, then the populations at their center. The Forge treats your selection as one compounding position, not separate categories, and audits every pathway against it.
Step 3 of 4 · Weight the burdens · iRISE™ 0–100
Community knowledge enters the math here. Every domain starts at 50. Move a slider up when that domain drives the problem (75 for a major driver, 100 for the defining one) and down when it matters less (25 for a minor factor, 0 to leave it out). Domains at 50 or above count toward κ; at 75 or above the Forge requires a structural response.
Key: how to weight the domains on a particular issue
Worked examples. Select one to load its weights, then adjust them with the community.
The rule that matters most: set the weights with the community, not for them.
Step 4 of 4 · Forge the solutions
Generate the iRISE™ Intersections Report: your problem and co-design verdict, the intersections analyzed, your weights and κ, the highest-burden counties on your weights, and ranked evidence-based pathways at three levels, each with citations.
How to Read the Numbers
What every score, rank, band and tag on this site means, and where to use each tool.
From raw values to a composite
Each scored county indicator is ranked across Ohio's 88 counties and turned into a percentile, adjusted so that 0 always means the heaviest burden and 100 the lightest. A high median income becomes a high percentile; a high food insecurity rate becomes a low one. This Ohio percentile drives every score, rank and band on the site.
County Health Rankings, CDC PLACES and most HDPulse measures are published for every U.S. county, so each figure also carries a US percentile: the same 0-to-100 reading against every county in the nation that reports the measure. Use it to see whether a county that looks moderate within Ohio is heavy by national standards. HDPulse US percentiles come from the national county rank HDPulse publishes with each export. Feeding America and breastfeeding figures carry US percentiles computed from their national files. Measures extracted for Ohio only (AHRQ, CDC heart disease, stroke and all-cause mortality) show a dash in the US percentile column.
Indicators are grouped into the eight iRISE™ domains. A domain score is the average percentile of its indicators for that county. The iRISE™ composite is the average of the domains that have data. Counties are ranked on the composite, and rank 1 carries the heaviest burden in Ohio.
Burden bands
Ranks are grouped into five bands of about 18 counties each. The map, profiles, reports and Forge all use the same bands. Bands describe position within Ohio; a county in the lightest band can still carry real hardship.
What this release covers
All eight domains are scored in this release. An indicator is scored only when at least 60% of Ohio counties report it; homicides and disconnected youth fall below that and are shown as context. Demographics, disability measures and SNAP receipt are always context: they describe who lives in a county, not a burden it carries.
Tags you will see
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| EMBEDDED | Stored in the Atlas with its vintage shown beside it. Profiles name the release: CHR 2025 County Health Rankings, PLACES 2025 CDC PLACES, HDPULSE HDPulse exports of October 4, 2026. |
| LOW COVERAGE | Reported for fewer than 60% of Ohio counties because of small counts. Shown for the counties that have it, never scored. |
| AWAITING | No county data yet. Excluded from scores, never estimated. |
| THIN | A domain resting on one indicator for a county. Reported, but not firm. |
| CONTEXT | A state-level measure shown for interpretation and never scored: alcohol use, flu vaccination and violent victimization. |
Comparing counties
Profiles and the Report Builder compare a county with the nearest Ohio county by centroid distance unless you choose another. The Report Builder takes up to three comparison counties. Neighboring counties share labor markets, hospitals and media, so they make a fairer yardstick than the state median. Ohio and United States values appear beside every indicator for reference.
Weights and κ
In the Report Builder and the Solution Forge, every domain starts at a weight of 50. The weighting scale reads 0–25 background, 26–50 contributing, 51–75 significant and 76–100 central. Domains weighted 50 or above count toward κ, the compounding factor: κ = 1 + 0.12 × (domains at 50 or above − 1). Domains weighted 75 or above require a structural response.
Weighted burden is the weight-averaged burden (100 minus the domain score) across the weighted domains. Compounded burden multiplies it by κ, capped at 100. In the Solution Forge each county also gets its own κ, counted from the weighted domains where that county is itself burdened (score below 50), so counties carrying the whole pattern rank highest.
Using the Solution Forge
The Forge works in four steps. Step 1 names the problem, the community most affected, any number of counties, the indicators to report, issue areas, and how the community is at the table. Step 2 maps the intersecting identity axes and the populations at their center. Step 3 weights the eight domains and ranks your counties on those weights. Step 4 generates the iRISE™ Intersections Report.
The co-design choice sets the readiness verdict: Community-Led is implementation-ready, Co-Design Partnership is ready upon community sign-off, and Structured Consultation or Not yet mark every pathway provisional. County data are not broken out by identity, so the Forge audits each pathway against the axes and populations you chose instead.
Pathways are ranked by your weight times the average burden across your counties. Selecting no counties runs all 88.
Cautions
Small counties have wide margins of error on survey estimates; treat narrow gaps between small counties as inconclusive. Residential segregation is not published for 17 counties with fewer than 100 Black residents; those counties are unranked on that indicator, never shown as zero. The HDPulse insurance measure covers women ages 18 to 64, the group in that export; County Health Rankings and PLACES add insurance for everyone under 65, adults and children. Preventable hospital stays cover Medicare enrollees, mostly 65 and older.
PLACES figures are model-based estimates from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, age-adjusted so counties with older or younger populations can be compared. The Ohio figure for a PLACES measure is the population-weighted average of its 88 counties.
Residential stability scores more stability as a lighter burden. College counties such as Athens and Wood score low because of student turnover, not displacement, so read it alongside housing cost burden.
HDPulse labels the state violent victimization measure a rate per 100,000; the Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes these survey rates per 1,000 persons age 12 or older. The value is shown as exported.
Citations
Every value in this release is embedded in the Atlas. The core releases are the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps 2025 national analytic file, the CDC PLACES 2025 county file, and HDPulse exports made October 4, 2026. National files from the iRISE™ Data Drive collection (October 12, 2026) add Feeding America's Map the Meal Gap 2026 (2024 data) and 2025 (2019–2023), the AHRQ Social Determinants of Health Database 2023, CDC heart disease and stroke mortality 2022–2024, CDC WONDER all-cause mortality 2018–2024, CDC county breastfeeding initiation 2023–2024, and USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Codes 2023. Ohio's 88 counties were extracted from each. County Health Rankings and PLACES cover every U.S. county, so each Ohio figure also carries a national percentile. Ohio's rank among the states uses the County Health Rankings state rows, where rank 1 is the heaviest burden.
County Health Rankings: University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. (2025). County Health Rankings & Roadmaps 2025 [Data set]. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org
CDC PLACES: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). PLACES: Local data for better health, county data 2025 release [Data set]. https://www.cdc.gov/places
Feeding America: Ribar, D. C., Harris, V., Dewey, A., Dawes, S., Hilvers, J., & Engelhard, E. (2026). Map the Meal Gap: An analysis of local food insecurity and food costs in the United States in 2024. Feeding America.
AHRQ: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2025). Social Determinants of Health Database, county data 2023 [Data set]. https://www.ahrq.gov/sdoh/data-analytics/sdoh-data.html
CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interactive Atlas of Heart Disease and Stroke; CDC WONDER Multiple Cause of Death, 2018–2024; Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity: County-level breastfeeding initiation rates [Data sets].
USDA: Economic Research Service. (2023). Rural-Urban Continuum Codes [Data set].
County boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau. Cartographic boundary files, counties.
Suggested citation for the data: HDPulse: An Ecosystem of Health Disparities and Specific Populations Health Resources. National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Created 10/4/2026. Available from https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov
Suggested citation for the Atlas: Crain, C. (2026). Ohio Prevention Data Atlas (pilot release). iRISE™ Data / Prevention at the Intersections.
Glossary
Terms used across the Report Builder, County Map, County Profiles and Solution Forge, grouped by where you meet them.
About
The Atlas
The Ohio Prevention Data Atlas is a pilot of the iRISE™ platform for all 88 Ohio counties. It gives nonprofits, residents, health departments and decision-makers the same county data that funders and agencies use to describe their communities, organized around how hardships overlap.
iRISE™
The Intersectional Resilience Index for Social Equity scores a place on how burdens compound across domains of life. A county that carries housing, food and health care burdens at once faces more than the sum of three separate problems; κ expresses that compounding in the Report Builder.
Dr. Crystallee Crain
Dr. Crystallee Crain is the founder of iRISE™ Data and of Prevention at the Intersections, a research and consulting practice she founded in 2010. She created the iRISE™ algorithm and holds a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, with more than 18 years of university teaching. She is originally from Flint, Michigan, and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Contact
Email irisedata@gmail.com · Schedule a conversation at calendly.com/crystallee-crain