SUMMARY: The data used in the Health Map are described in detail in three documents. Immediatedly below you will find the definitions of the terms. Technical detail on disease categories, etc., is provided in the Diagnostic Detail.

Description of the CNI methodology is available in Community Need Index. The Healthy Community Forum would like to thank Catholic Healthcare West and Thomson Healthcare for sharing the Community Needs Index to help healthcare organizations, not-for-profits and policy makers identify and address barriers to healthcare access in their communities.

SOURCES OF ERROR:This data should be used with cautious awareness of the potential for errors.  The demographic data (and its derivative CNI) are estimates derived from the 2000 census.  They are subject to errors of the original census (e.g., undercount of the homeless and of persons of tenuous residency status), problems of estimating growth since the census (e.g., estimating the population of newly developed residential subdivisions), and issues concerned with definition of zip code boundaries and their changes since 2000.  They are also subject to random variation which is particularly problematic in zip codes with smaller populations and for events that are rare (e.g., deaths from Diabetes Mellitus which number only 26 for all the zip codes in El Dorado County).  This is compounded by the withholding of data when numbers are small (e.g., when deaths to residents of a zip code are less than 5; hence, zero deaths to residents of a zip code really means "less than 5").