Did You Know?

The population of Hopkins County in 1980 was 46,174. In 2017 it was 45,547, a decrease of 1.4%. Over the same period the population of the US increased from 226.5 million to 325.7 million, an increase of over 30%.
People in Hopkins County die, on average, over 5 years sooner than people in healtheir parts of the US.
One-quarter of children in Hopkins County live in poverty, more than twice the rate in some other parts of the country and higher than the Kentucky average of 22%, which includes some of the poorest counties in the country. The rate is similar for black and white children, but over 75% of Hispanic children in the county live in poverty. The number of children living in poverty in Hopkins county has increased over the last 15 years.
The teen birth rate in Hopkins County is 50 per every 1000 females between 15-19. The average in Kentucky is 36/1000. The rate in Oldham county is 10/1000.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Kentucky is the second-worst state in the nation for obesity among white, non-Hispanic adults, at 35%. It's over 39% for black adults. Kentucky is one of nine states with an overall adult obesity rate over 30%.
Black men are 70% more likely to develop prostate cancer than white men and over twice as likely to die from it.
26% of adults in Hopkins County smoke, almost twice the national rate of 14%. Smoking is directly correlated to heart disease, pulmonary disease, high blood pressure and cancer.

Why we need data--good data

The first thing you need to know as you are starting out on any journey is where you are. There's no way to plot a course to get somewhere if you don't know from where you start. For us, on this journey, we already have a quite a bit of data. We need more and better data, but we have enough to get a pretty good picture of where we are. Part of our very first actions as a group going forward will be gathering more data and getting more input. We have to make sure that the information we gather represents everyone, so we'll be working on ways to make that happen. Your voice matters. Your lived experience matters. Your aspirations matter. We will make sure you have a chance to be heard.

Sources of data

There are many places to find data, but in this effort, as in everything else, it's important to make sure the data you use is accurate and true. All the data we use is either data we have gathered ourselves or that comes from verified and trusted sources, like the US Census Bureau, The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and County Health Rankings and Roadmaps (CHRR, which is a joint endeavor of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin College of Medicine and Public Health). You will find no information on this site that hasn't been verified to the best of our ability. Our only agenda is to build a better future in Hopkins County, rural Kentucky and rural communities everywhere.

The Community Health Needs Assessment

One of the first things that we did as a coalition was to collaborate on producing our Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) in 2018. All non-profit healthcare providers have to publish a community assessment that is available to the public every three years in order to stay in the good graces of the IRS. The IRS requirements for the document aren't very demanding, so some CHNAs are better than others. We knew that we could make a better one by working together. We gathered a lot of statistical data on the health and demographics of our region, then we developed a pretty detailed survey to ask people what they thought their issues and those of the community were. The result was that we gathered a lot more information from a lot more people than we had on previous CHNAs.