Who gets more sleep, folks who live in Alton Park or the North Shore?
Who’s the worst when it comes to seeing a dentist, and what are the consequences?
And what Chattanooga neighborhood is the home of the city’s worst binge drinkers?
A new interactive map from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides the answers to those questions and much more.
About half of the people in the Alton Park census tract get fewer than seven hours of sleep every night, compared to about 30 percent for folks on the North Shore and Hixson, close to the national average of 29 percent, according to the CDC data.
People who live in the North Shore area are much more likely than other Chattanoogans to see a dentist — 70 percent — compared to 46 percent in the Brainerd area and 27-32 percent in poorer areas of Avondale, Riverside and Alton Park. Although the CDC does not draw a direct connection, the map also shows 11 percent of the residents of the North Shore over age 65 have lost all of their teeth, compared to 18 percent in St. Elmo, 22.5 percent in the Belvoir area of Brainerd and 48 percent in Alton Park. The national average is 17 percent.
Dr. James Bailey, a public health specialist and director of the Center for Health System Improvement at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, said he welcomed the CDC data.
“Having that kind of community health assessment gives us just the kind of marching orders we need to build better health systems to serve people better,” he said.