Low Birthweight in Bay Area Counties

Data source: calenviroscreen40resultsdatadictionary.xlsx

Background: This dashboard explores data in the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 dataset. CalEnviroScreen (CES) is a mapping tool that helps identify California communities that are most affected by many sources of pollution, and where people are often especially vulnerable to pollution’s effects. It uses environmental, health, and socioeconomic information to produce scores for every census tract in the state. The dataset includes information on environmental exposures and health outcomes for each census tract in the state. The dataset was last updated in October 2021.

CES uses a suite of indicators to characterize pollution burden (indicators) and population characteristics (indicators). Each indicator is assigned a score for each census tract in the state based on the most up-to-date suitable data. Scores are weighted and added together within the two groups to derive a pollution burden score and a population characteristics score. Those scores are multiplied to give the final CalEnviroScreen score.

In this dashboard, we will use the data for 9 Bay Area counties to explore low birth weight across this region and it’s association with CES scores. This information is useful to provide preliminary insights on how low birthweight may be associated with environmental factors. It may encourage new research questions to be developed on how low birth weight can be reduced by improving CES scores.

Results: In the graph to below, we can see the distribution of the percentage of low birth weight among census tracts in the 9 Bay Area counties. The mean is around 5%, which is denoted by a red dotted line, although can range between 0-15% depending on the census tract. Percent of low birth weight births appears to be relatively Normally distributed, with a slight skew to the left, which is expected because 0 is the lowest possible value.

Low Birth Weight Data

Results: And below, we can see that as the CES 4.0 percentile range increases by census tract (higher percentile indicates higher scores and increased burden), low birthweight also increases. This is consistent across every percentile range. This shows that low birth weight has a positive trend with environmental burden. Additional data exploration can be done to understand which environmental burdens may have the highest impact on low birthweight, or, if other confounding factors, such as income, education, discrimination, or other factors, may be driving low birthweight.

Low Birth Weight

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