The CDC’s PLACES program is an expansion of the small area health estimates that they created for their 500 Cities program starting in 2015. The 500 Cities program used statistical techniques to produce estimates for various health outcomes or risk factors at small areas for the largest 500 Cities in the United States. The PLACES program expands these estimates across the country, and makes the data available for Census tracts, ZCTAs, Census places (called Cities on PolicyMap), and Counties. These estimates were created using the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the Decennial Census, and estimates from the American Community Survey.
The CDC publishes both crude and age-adjusted estimates. Many of the chronic health conditions and risk factors estimated in this dataset have a strong correlation with age. This means that areas with much older populations may have deceptively high crude rates of illness. Age-adjusted estimates correct for the different age profiles of different geographies, which makes it easier to understand whether certain health conditions are truly worse in certain areas. Crude rates are available at the Census tract, ZCTA, City, and County levels, and Age-adjusted rates are available at the City and County levels.