Physical and Mental Health in Georgia in 2024
Mental health has become an increasing concern in society today. This likely comes with concerns in one’s physical health as well. To explore the overall health landscape in Georgia, specifically concerning physical and mental health, variables such as income, exercise, poverty, school segregation, and more will be observed and evaluated. The health landscape in Georgia overall reveals complex relationships between socioeconomic factors, physical activity, and health outcomes. Mental health often inter plays with physical health, warranting a closer exploration of these dynamics to inform community interventions. Throughout this project, it will be discovered that improving exercise access, specifically in lower-income areas, could have a wide range of benefits for overall health as well as academic outcomes.
In Georgia, in 2024, data shows that people report more poor mental health days than poor physical health days.
Nevertheless, physical health and mental health are interrelated.
As shown in this scatterplot, it is evident that an increase in poor physical health days is correlated with higher poor mental health days; therefore, it is worth evaluating the overall impact of physical health on mental health. It is generally known that physical activity improves mental health. Highlighting the importance of physical activity, the coloring in the graph shows that lower levels of physical inactivity (more active people) are associated with fewer poor mental and physical health days, reinforcing the critical role of exercise in holistic health. Throughout this project, it is important to recognize that the variable physical inactivity with lower values means more physically active and higher values means more physically inactive (high is “worse” than low values).
A limiting factor to people exercising may be access to exercise opportunities, such as a park or recreational facilities.
People with less access to exercise opportunities are more physically inactive. As access to exercise opportunities increases, physical inactivity levels fall, suggesting that people generally take advantage of the exercise opportunities provided to them and become more physically active with those opportunities. As physically active individuals have fewer poor physical and mental health days, it is important to locate the geographic areas with limited exercise opportunities as they may struggle more physically and mentally. Consequently, it is important that people have access to exercise opportunities through infrastructure in their communities.
People in lower income communities are more physically inactive compared to high income areas, contributing to health disparities between income classes.
Lower income locations face a barrier of limited access to exercise opportunities, as shown by the low overall count in the high exercise access category. Lower income locations have overall lower levels of physical inactivity, whereas, higher income areas have consistently higher levels of physical activity, regardless of their access to exercise opportunities. This demonstrates that exercise barriers impact lower-income groups, suggesting that lack of motivation may not be driving physical inactivity and that the driver could include barriers in the community, such as access to exercise facilities. Additionally, within the lower-middle income level, as access to exercise increases, there are less physically inactive people. Within the upper-middle income level, more people are less physically inactive (more physically inactive).A suggestion to communities could be to prioritize creating accessible and affordable exercise options in lower-income areas to improve physical and mental health, as the low income category has a large difference between physical inactivity levels as exercise access increases.
Additional factors that may contribute to poor physical and mental health, especially among younger people, is segregation in schools and poverty among children.
Generally, school segregation remains low overall in Georgia, as all of the violin plots are more dense around the lowest school segregation values. Add high-income areas often experience greater segregation, potentially due to disparities in housing and private school attendance. While overall segregation in GA is low, these disparities create unequal opportunities for students, impacting their health and educational outcomes.
Looking further into income-based trends that could contribute to physical inactivity and exercise access in GA, the relationship between income levels and children living in poverty is examined. As expected, there is a clear relationship. As income level increases, the percentage of children living in poverty decreases This relationship is not surprising but is important context for understanding the broader socioeconomic challenges facing these communities.
Looking further into these disparities in terms of segregation and poverty, their relationships with physical inactivity and exercise access are evaluated.
https://jtk6tb.shinyapps.io/Project/
Segregation in schools does not create strong relationships with either physical inactivity or exercise access. While school segregation demonstrates a relatively weak relationship with exercise access and physical inactivity, the data reveals a stronger and more significant relationship when examining child poverty levels with exercise access and physical inactivity. As the proportion of children living in poverty increases, exercise access is lower, which as previously shown, would lead to a decrease physical inactivity. The opposite is true as well. This further supports the relationships previously established, as it was determined that income influences physical inactivity and exercise access, so since child poverty levels has a strong relationship with income, poverty levels are highly correlated with these factors as well. Overall, as we see more poverty in lower income communities, there is a noticeable impact on access to exercise opportunities and higher rates of physical inactivity. This suggests that socioeconomic challenges, particularly financial constraints, are playing a key role in limiting opportunities for physical activity among children.
Within schools, it is important to see if these issues of mental and physical health, which are intensified between income classes, impact educational performance, which can be seen through evaluating test scores.
https://jtk6tb.shinyapps.io/Shiny2/
In the Shiny app, it is clear that overall, math and reading scores are positively correlated with one another, as expected. When evaluating the scores by different income levels, a clear positive relationship is found between income and both reading and math scores. As income increases, the average scores in both subjects also increase. Evaluating physical inactivity, low physical inactivity (more activity) corresponds to higher reading and math scores. As academic scores decrease, physical inactivity increases. This suggests that being physically inactive may have a negative effect on academic performance. Lastly, evaluating exercise access, students with low access to exercise tend to have the lowest scores, but as exercise access increases, so do the scores. This shows a positive relationship between exercise access and academic performance. These relationships reveal that factors like income and overall activity are correlated students’ academic success.
I would like to see how physical inactivity, exercise access, and income have changed over time in Georgia.
To observe the changes in income, physical inactivity, and exercise access over time in Georgia in the last 10 years (2014-2024), we can watch this animation of the variables over time. Over time, the negative relationship between income and physical activity becomes more clear, especially starting in 2022. Regardless of the year, exercise access appears to be higher for counties with higher income and lower physical inactivity, as shown by the lighter orange colors on the right side of the plot compared to the darker blue colors on the left side of the plot. In 2019, overall physical inactivity increases and in 2023, overall physical inactivity decreases, perhaps as a side effect of Covid-19.
Action should be taken to address the concerns in physical inactivity and its effect on overall health, but state-wide action is unlikely; therefore, it is important to find areas that can benefit from initial changes.
As previously mentioned, physical and mental health are affected by many factors, some of which can be improved. Specifically, action should be taken to address access to exercise opportunities to improve physical activity, leading to less poor mental and physical health days.The Southwest part of Georgia has low access to exercise access and low levels of physical inactivity. Additionally, these areas are lower-income areas that would benefit from access to exercise opportunities.
In conclusion, the data recorded in Georgia in 2024 demonstrates the impact that access to exercise, income, and social factors, such as school segregation and child poverty, have on overall physical activity and physical health. It is found that targeted actions should be taken to address under served areas, specifically areas with lower income, limited exercise access, and high physical inactivity could benefit from additional opportunities for exercise. This could lead to healthier communities overall in terms of physical and mental health in addition to academic performance.