August 2024 Updates: State & Senate Snapshots, Cities in Congressional Districts, and more!
We are excited to announce some new features to the Dashboard, and a mid-year data update for one of our newer metrics.
We have made state-level data more easily accessible with our new ‘State Snapshots’ feature, key to using Dashboard data for both chambers of Congress.
For the first time, we have cross-linked the Congressional District Health Dashboard with our sister site, the City Health Dashboard. This is an exciting way for users to see data for health and its drivers in cities that fall within congressional districts.
Finally, we are excited to announce the addition of the latest available data to our Medicaid Enrollment metric.
NEW! Use the Dashboard to see data for your state
This update allows a user to easily capture the state values for every metric on our Health Snapshots page. Dashboard users have been able to view state values for every metric on the Metric Maps page, but this new update provides users with the ability to view state-level data at-a-glance! This is particularly helpful to Senate offices, advocates working on issues in both chambers of Congress, and anyone interested in state-level data for our metrics.
Ways you can explore state-level data on the Dashboard:
✓ View your state health snapshot to see all metric values for your state in one place on Health Snapshots
✓ Look up your state from the Congressional District Health Dashboard homepage
✓ Visualize comparisons among congressional districts within a state for a selected metric using the Metric Maps
✓ Compare metric values among districts and states with the Compare Districts feature
Explore data for Cities in Congressional Districts
Our sister site, the City Health Dashboard, offers data on 40+ measures of health and its drivers for over 1,100 cities across the U.S. Any city with a population of 50,000 and larger is included on the site, as well as a growing number of cities below that population size.
For the first time, users can easily find the cities located in their congressional district that are also included on the City Health Dashboard. Each city name will also have a link that will take you to its associated page on the City Health Dashboard website.
To see this new feature, navigate to the District Facts tab for the district’s Health Snapshot. As an example, see the Cities in the Maryland 3rd below or at this link.
As we add new cities to the City Health Dashboard each year, these maps will be updated. We invite you to explore this new feature, cross-linking our two Dashboards for the first time!
Data Update for Medicaid Enrollment
The Dashboard team has added two new quarters of data – the last quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 – to our Medicaid Enrollment metric. This metric displays the quarterly percentage of individuals enrolled in Medicaid at the congressional district level.
In the new data, the percentage of the population enrolled in Medicaid decreased in most congressional districts. This may be due to the end of the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision, which allowed states to cease continuous coverage and begin Medicaid disenrollments beginning in April 2023. The graph below illustrates the average percent of population enrolled in Medicaid over time, from the third quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2024.
This time represents a period of significant change in Medicaid enrollment in all states due to federal and state healthcare policy changes. Even though states began disenrollment at various times throughout 2023, some beginning as early as April 2023, the trend over time demonstrates a decline in enrollment for most congressional districts. For more information about how federal and state policies impact Medicaid enrollment, please see our partner organization’s resource on Medicaid ‘unwinding’: “Unwinding Watch: Tracking Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End” from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
We’ll continue to update this metric with new quarters as more recent data becomes available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. To learn more about how our metric is calculated, see our Metric Background page.
Connect with us
We are hosting our next Virtual Office Hours next month on Thursday, September 12th at 11:30am ET, where we will be walking through the new updates. Register for the webinar here.
If you have any questions about the release, suggestions for future site improvements, or want help walking through the data, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Dashboard team at [email protected] or fill out this short survey. We are happy to provide personalized assistance with the site.
