Vizient Vulnerability Index public access

The patent pending Vizient^® Vulnerability Index™ identifies social needs and obstacles to care in neighborhoods that may influence a person's overall health

The information in the Vizient Vulnerability Index file allows users to support Social Drivers of Health at the neighborhood level. The downloadable file provides nine domains of social needs (shown to the right) and the overall vulnerability index for each census tract and ZIP code across the United States of America. Any score >1 is considered an area of “high vulnerability”. These are neighborhoods that experience specific obstacles to care greater than one standard deviation above the national mean.

Unlike other indices, the Vizient Vulnerability Index flexes to ensure the index values are location-appropriate. Other indices have a single index algorithm for the whole country, while the Vizient Vulnerability Index adapts to the local relevance of each domain as it correlates to life expectancy. This allows for variation in the weighting of the domains across different geographic areas depending on what’s important – the most relevant factors affecting health in Lincoln, Nebraska might not be the most relevant in New York City.

Download the file

The heat map below displays the overall Vizient Vulnerability Index values for neighborhoods across the nation with Chicago highlighted as an example. Within the broad regional variation shown in the map there is local variability from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Figure 1. Vizient Vulnerability Index values for neighborhoods across the nation.