Developing Healthy Communities: The Health Opportunity Index

People want to live in a safe and healthy community. This has influenced the Virginia Department of Health to develop a Health Opportunity Index (HOI). The purpose of the HOI is to provide a baseline for a community to determine what factors lead to positive health outcomes and healthy communities. The HOI uses many social, economic, educational, demographic, and environmental variables that have been shown to be related to the well-being of a community and related directly or indirectly to the health status of a population. The HOI is based on ten indicators that reflect a broad array of community concerns relating to Education Attainment, EPA Environmental Air Toxics, Affordability of Housing and Transportation, Household Income Diversity, Job Participation, Population Density, Racial Diversity, Population Churning, Material Deprivation, and the Local Commute of Workers. All ten of the indicators are constructed from over 30 variables. Normal statistical predictor models (ordinary least square regression, [OLS]) and predictor models that took spatial, place-based considerations into account (geospatial weighted regression, [GWR]) were utilized. The HOI variables had an overall prediction rate of over 80 percent for life expectancy when space was taken into account. The indicators contributed differentially to the overall prediction coefficient weights depending on their location within the state. This indicates that space and place are significant in understanding the distribution of life expectancies. The HOI can enable public health practitioners to examine how health-based indicators relate to broader community conditions in order to develop public policies that promote health and health equity.