NURS 5515 — Providing Care at the Community Level — Read: County-Level Health Statistics

Links to all state and territorial health departments are available at the Centers for Disease Control website. You can always Google the state health department you are looking for too. Look for a section on the state's health department website that refers to "Statistics" or "Data and Statistics." 

To map and find general data on county-level variables, some of which are not census-related, go to the National Association of Counties Explorer.

There are 95 counties in Tennessee. Three of those counties are consolidated city-county governments: Trousdale (Hartsville), Moore (Lynchburg), and Nashville-Davidson, which has been a consolidated city-county government since 1962. All counties are subject to control by the Tennessee General Assembly and have no authority except that expressly given them by statute. Since 1978, all counties in Tennessee have had the same structure: executive officers (county executive -- usually called the "mayor" -- sheriff, trustee, register, county clerk, and assessor of property, along with a county governing body of not more than 25 members, except in the case of the three consolidated city-counties, in which there is no limit on the size of the governing body.

Tennessee is behind the curve compared to other states when it comes to making health statistics easily available and searchable online. Its counties are similarly out of step.

The most up-to-date information on vital statistics (natality, morbidity, and mortality) is found in state government publications rather than in U.S. national government publications. This information is almost always broken down by county only, so statistics for a census tract are not usually available (unless the data is collected by the Census Bureau).

1.  County-Level Data

Tennessee Health Statistics Publications and Data Requests (https://www.tn.gov/health/health-program-areas/statistics.html)

There's also another page, similarly called Health Statistics Publications (https://www.tn.gov/health/health-program-areas/statistics/health-statistics-publications.html), with a number of specific reports, such as behavioral risk factor surveys, Tennessee births and deaths, hospital data, and nursing home trends.

Specific reports and publications available include –

Tennessee's Health: Picture of the Present, 2005 (https://hit.health.tn.gov/CountyProfiles/Cntyimage/PicturePresent2005.pdf) Population, pregnancy and birth data, and mortality data broken down by age and race, pregnancies by age and race, five leading causes of death by age group, time series date, and manpower data for health professionals.

Countdown to Progress, 2005: A County Data Book (https://hit.health.tn.gov/CountyProfiles/Cntyimage/CountyDown2005.pdf) Trend data for births, and more detailed breakdown of deaths.

Tennessee Vital Statistics (https://www.tn.gov/health/health-program-areas/statistics/health-data/vital-statistics.html) Includes number and percentage of births (including adolescent births and underweight births), deaths, infant deaths, induced pregnancy terminations, and adolescent pregnancies broken down by sex.

2. For other state of Tennessee data visit the TN Comprehensive Health Data Listing (https://www.tn.gov/content/tn/health/health-program-areas/statistics/health-data.html).  See also Health Information Tennessee (https://hit.health.tn.gov/). Click on “Data Query.” Choose your variables. In addition to the Data Query option, the HIT page also includes Tables, Reports, and County Profiles that may be of use.

3. For lists of county health departments, see:

Local and Regional Health Departments (https://www.tn.gov/health/health-program-areas/localdepartments.html) Contact information for Tennessee county public health departments.

Reports for all 95 counties are available at the Department of Health's Special Reports page. Select the county and download the report as a PDF. Or, get all 95 counties in one report (large file: 490 pages). Nearby Middle Tennessee counties are downloadable below.