CDC PLACES: Local Data for Better Health
- Source
- CDC
- Update Cadence
- Annual release
- Coverage
- City, county, census tract, and place-level estimates
- Official URL
- View source
What It Measures
CDC PLACES provides model-based local estimates for chronic disease, mental health, prevention, and health behavior measures such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, depression, access to preventive care, and related indicators.
How Local Health Signal Uses It
Local Health Signal uses PLACES on city pages to add community health context alongside infectious-disease surveillance. This helps answer not only what is circulating, but also what broader health conditions and prevention patterns characterize a community.
What It Tells You
PLACES is useful for understanding structural and long-term community health patterns at the city level. It adds depth to city pages by showing health context that infectious disease dashboards alone do not capture.
Limitations
- PLACES is not real-time outbreak reporting.
- Estimates are model-based and can lag current conditions.
- These measures describe population-level patterns, not individual risk.
- PLACES should be used as local context, not as a substitute for current infectious-disease surveillance.