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How the CountyPulse score is built

One number per county, in plain English. No black box — here's exactly what goes in, how it's combined, and what it can and can't tell you.

The one-paragraph version

For every Texas county we take 16 public-health measures from the CDC, flip the ones where "higher is worse" so that up always means better, stretch each onto a common 0–100 scale, then take a weighted average. That average is the well-being index — 0 is the worst county on record, 100 the best, and most counties land somewhere in the middle. Higher is better.

Step by step

1 · Pull the measures. Source is CDC PLACES (2022 release) — model-based small-area estimates of health at the county level. We use 16 measures spanning chronic disease, health behaviors, mental health, prevention, and access to care.

2 · Orient every measure so "up = better." Some measures are good when high (e.g. having a routine checkup); most chronic-disease and access measures are bad when high (e.g. diabetes, uninsured rate). For every "higher is worse" measure we invert it before scoring, so a healthy county always scores up, never down.

3 · Normalize to 0–100. Each measure is min-max scaled across all 254 counties:

normalized = 100 × (value − min) ÷ (max − min)

This puts diabetes rate and uninsured rate on the same footing — a county in the worst 10% on one measure is directly comparable to the worst 10% on another.

4 · Weight and average. Not every measure matters equally. Chronic-disease burden and access to care carry more weight than a single behavioral measure. The final score is the weighted mean of the normalized measures (weights below).

5 · Rank and place. We sort all 254 counties and attach each one's rank and percentile so a raw score has context — 62.6 means little until you know it's #73 of 254.

The measures & draft weights

Weights are editorial and in draft — a first honest pass, not a peer-reviewed model. The six measures shown live in the map panel are marked ◆. Direction shows whether a higher raw value is good (▲) or bad (▼) before orientation.

Measure	Dir.	Weight
Chronic disease
Diabetes ◆	▼	10%
Obesity ◆	▼	8%
High blood pressure ◆	▼	8%
Coronary heart disease	▼	7%
COPD	▼	5%
Cancer (excl. skin)	▼	4%
Mental & behavioral health
Depression ◆	▼	7%
Frequent mental distress ◆	▼	7%
Smoking	▼	6%
Binge drinking	▼	3%
Physical inactivity	▼	4%
Access & prevention
Uninsured 18–64 ◆	▼	10%
No routine checkup	▼	4%
No dental visit	▼	3%
Cholesterol screening	▲	3%
Health insurance / annual checkup uptake	▲	1%

Why these weights

The heaviest weights go to measures that are upstream and durable — diabetes, the uninsured rate, and cardiovascular burden shape years of a county's health, so they anchor the score. Mental-health measures are weighted meaningfully because they're often the least-visible driver of well-being and the most under-counted. Single behaviors (binge drinking, one missed checkup) are down-weighted: they matter, but they move week to week and don't define a place. The goal is a score that reflects structural health, not a snapshot of one bad month.

Hill Country first. CountyPulse is built from Kerr County outward. The 14 Hill Country counties are outlined in gold on the map because that's the region this project serves — but the index and the math are identical for all 254 Texas counties.

What this is not

Not clinical. Not diagnostic. Not advice.

The underlying CDC PLACES numbers are modeled estimates, not a census of real patients — they're statistical projections onto small areas, with real uncertainty. A county's score is a relative signal for comparing places, not a verdict on any person, neighborhood, or decision. Weights are our editorial judgment and will change as the model matures. Don't make a medical, financial, or relocation decision on this number alone — use it to ask better questions.