Health Data

From http://ghdx.healthdata.org/us-data  By county

No consistency among data sets in terms of setup. 

Directions for the alcohol data set

• Download and unzip
• Open in Excel
  • Delete columns you do not want
  • Rename rest for dBase
  • Delete "county" and "parish" form the location
  • Delete any commas, most likely in the County Name
  • save as .csv
• Open .CSV in MICRODEM to convert to DBF
  • Trim blanks in all string fields
  • Join to the "us_state_names.dbf" using the state name field.
  • Fill from joined table the state abbreviation and state FIPS
  • Concatenate the County and state abbreviations, with a "/" as the separator.
  • Join to the fixed counties shapefile, on the County/state abbreviation field
  • Fill from joined table the county FIPS
• Open the state outlines shape file
  • Concatenate the County and state abbreviations, with a "/" as the separator.
  • Join the alcohol database
  • Plot

Differences for the smoking data set

• Filter for the year, and gender (they are in rows rather than columns)
• Save the filtered database

Fix the counties shapefile

• Delete "county" and "parish" form the county name
• Concatenate the County and state abbreviations, with a "/" as the separator.
• This will be the join field

Last revision 4/6/2017