CDC Social Vulnerability Tool and Life Expectancy Calculator Activities

CDC Social Vulnerability Tool Activity

This activity allows participants to search for their own county to explore the social vulnerability index (SVI).  The SVI was originally developed to help emergency planners to identify special populations that are vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters.  This allows them to tailor emergency plans specific to at risk population needs such as transportation, special communication methods for the hard of hearing or limited English proficiency residents who may not get messages through the traditional mass media channels.  The scope of use has been expanded to allow for identifying special needs during COVID-19 testing, mitigation strategies as well as vaccine distribution and recovery efforts.  SVI is determined by evaluating 15 different indicators in four categories of focus: socioeconomic status, household composition & disability, minority status and language, and housing type & transportation.

Go to: https://svi.cdc.gov/map.html

Use the map to find your county.  It may be helpful to click the link at the bottom left hand side under the map that says “view larger map”.

 

Click on the desired county and a box pops up with social vulnerability information specific to that county.  (Tip: it is helpful to know the general location of your county within the state because the names of the counties do not pop up when you hover over the county.  You have to actually click it to see which county it is.

 

 If you do not know the general location of your county, you can view a map of Texas counties here https://geology.com/county-map/texas.shtmlto find the location and then go back to the SVI map to click in that area.  If you live in another state, you can Google search map of Oklahoma counties, or whichever state you live in.)

 

Scores range from zero to one with one being the highest vulnerability.

 

Higher scores indicate that there is more social vulnerability in that county and will likely take more resources and effort to assist families in identified neighborhoods to recover from disasters.

 

You can click the “Data Dictionary” link within the black box for your county and it will bring up a fact sheet of how the SVI value was calculated and what it means.

Life Expectancy Calculator Activity

This activity will allow participants to look up their own address to see what the estimated life expectancy is for those living in their neighborhood.

Go to https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/interactives/whereyouliveaffectshowlongyoulive.html

1. In the middle of the page, there is a place to enter the participant’s address.  
2. The entire home address must be included: house number, street name, city, state and zip code.
3. Click find.
4. Four different results are provided.
5. First is “My Area”.  This is the life expectancy for the address entered.
6. The second result is for the county the address is in.
7. The third result is for the state the address is in.
8. The last result is the national average life expectancy.
9. These results can be compared.
10. The participant can erase the address entered and put in another address in a different part of their county to compare the difference in life expectancy between the wealthy and the poor zip codes.
11. If the participant enters an address and does not get a result for their area but gets a result for their county, state and the national average, it could be due to no data being available at the census tract level for that address.  They can try a different address.