Years of Potential Life Lost Rate - Focus Area vs Other SES 1 ZIP Codes

City of Rochester and New York Finger Lakes Region (2010-2016)

The impact of place is clear when looking at the rates of premature mortality for the Focus Area compared to other SES 1 ZIP codes in the region. For each of the racial/ethnic populations, the YPLL rate is significantly higher in the Focus Area. This disparity is likely due to the compounding effect of risk factors that are concentrated in these low socioeconomic urban neighborhoods.

 

The Focus Area consists of eight high-poverty ZIP codes in the city of Rochester with particularly high concentration of African-Americans and Latinos. See a map of the Focus Area here.

Methodology note: The SES index ranking was developed by Common Ground Health and calculated using a variety of socioeconomic indicators from the American Community Survey including average income, poverty rates, education levels, housing value, and homeownership. Each ZIP code is assigned a socioeconomic (SES) index ranking from 1 to 5. The lower SES ZIP codes tend to have lower average income, higher poverty rates, lower prevalence of college degrees, etc.

Methodology note: Years of potential life lost (YPLL) is a widely used measure to assess the rate of premature mortality. YPLL places a larger weight on the deaths of younger people, in contrast with overall mortality statistics which are dominated by deaths of the elderly. The YPLL rates in Common Ground Health analyses are derived using 75 years as the baseline. A death at age 65 has YPLL of 10, where as a death at age 35 has a YPLL of 40. The rates are calculated per 100,000 population and are age-sex adjusted to account for differences in population distribution.

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