Health & Well-Being
Does your state offer and invest in ample healthcare, and places of healing and well-being for survivors? Not only do survivors often need medical attention as a direct result of domestic or sexual violence, but over the course of their lives they utilize healthcare services more, utilize more expensive services (e.g. emergency room), incur higher healthcare costs that last longer, and have poorer health outcomes (see for example, Bonomi et al, 2009). States that work to reduce healthcare costs, relieve medical debt, and expand access to trauma-informed and patient centered care will create landscapes of health equity.
The purpose of this Health Safety Landscape is to share data that helps tell the story of:
- Whether survivors have access to healthcare and other ways to support their well-being, in the short and long term
- How different populations fare in the health landscape of each state
- What physical and mental health for survivors looks like, and what is required to create it in our states
“The pandemic was used as another tactic of control, increasing unwanted pregnancies, taking away medical cards or scaring the survivors into not going to seek medical attention.”
“Survivors fell into the Medicaid gap and are uninsured, pressured to come to work even when ill, have to work more than one job because they can’t get full time work with benefits or wages are too low to survive.”
– advocate-respondents from CSAJ’s Economic Impact of COVID-19 Survey
Physical & Mental Health Dashboard
Note: Dashboards are best viewed on a desktop or laptop computer in full screen mode. The layout and functionality may distort to fit smart-phone screens.
View Methodology & Documentation Doc for a list of all terms, data, and data sources for each Safety Landscape.
- Full-screen mode: If the embedded dashboard below is hard to view, click the “expand” icon in the lower right corner of the window to view in full screen mode.
- Filters (dropdown menus): In the dashboard below, there are five filters (dropdown menus) that allow you to change and refine data in the chart (from left to right): Indicator Type, Health Indicator, Demographic Factor, Race/Ethnicity, and Year
- Using the filters to select/refine data in the view: From the “Indicator Type” dropdown (far left) select the category of data you want to view: Access or Outcome. Then select a specific data point from the “Health Indicator” dropdown to view in the map and related charts. Some indicators can be further refined by using the “Demographic Factor” and “Race/Ethnicity” dropdowns. (If there is no data available in thes dropdowns, “no sub-category data” and “no race/ethnicity data” will appear in the dropdown window)
- A note on the “Year” dropdown menu: Some indicators come from datasets from different years. If map or other chart detail disappears in the dashboard, try selecting a different year.
- In the map view: Hover over states for pop-ups with additional state-specific data.
- In the State to State Comparison chart (below map): View how states are distributed on the data point you selected via all five dropdowns. Assess whether your state ranks higher or lower on the selected indicator, is clustered with other states, and/or is above or below the national average (the vertical red line).
- In the All States/Territories chart (right of map): View specific statistics for states, sorted by top and bottom. Use the slider and dropdown to display more states or change how it is sorted.
- Click on your state in the map view: Toggle to a state drill-down with the details on the selected indicator for your state, including general population and rates of violence data.
- Click the download icon (bottom-right): To download a PDF, image, or PowerPoint slide of the dashboard. Ensure you’ve selected the data point via all five dropdowns and the view you want. Bring this to meetings, share with partners, add your own data to supplement, and use it in your advocacy!
- How do survivor self-reported health data compare to the general health status of all women in your state?
- Why do medical debt and maternal mortality rates matter when thinking about survivor safety?
- What other challenges facing survivors can be compounded by physical or mental health issues? (ie. housing, employment) Does data help evidence this?
- What data is not depicted here that you’d like to see?
- What’s upstream from the health picture painted here? What policies, funding, or other forces play a role in?
SEED-ing Advocacy
Click the links below to craft stories to fuel your advocacy & share your work, data, and recommendations with others. First, consider:
- What data stands out to you?
- How can this data be useful?
- What other data do you have to supplement what you see here? What else do you need?
- How can this data support your advocacy? Or how can your past advocacy efforts, insights, and lessons learned help others and improve the dashboard?
Use the prompts below to practice using dashboard data to craft and submit stories and ideas for systems change. You can also request assistance from CSAJ.
Use the prompts below to share your advocacy stories and best-practices with us. We’ll anonymize and add these as “map layers” in the dashboards in the future so the entire field can benefit. You can also request assistance from CSAJ.
Supplemental Resources
These additional resources are not meant to be exhaustive, but to fill some data gaps, and serve examples of data you may have (or could collect), including how it can be compiled and used in advocacy efforts. And they are meant to spur your curiosity to explore further.
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California Healthy Places Index An example of State-specific health equity data to fuel a range of advocacy
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Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2020 National data on racial disparities in maternal mortality (there is limited state-level data)
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The Sexual Abuse to Maternal Mortality Pipeline (2019) A report by Black Women’s Blueprint to connect the sexual assault, reproductive health and maternal mortality crises in America
Looking Upstream: Policy & Systems Change
Check back soon!
We are currently developing a National Survivor Economic Equity Policy Platform and will be adding more specific policy analysis to the dashboards and website.
