CDC PLACES — Local Data for Better Health

Overview

CDC PLACES provides model-based small-area estimates for 36 measures of chronic disease, health behavior, prevention, health status, and disability among U.S. adults. It is published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the CDC Foundation. PLACES extends the earlier 500 Cities Project to cover the entire United States at multiple sub-county geographic levels.

Two geographic grains are available — Census Tract and ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA). Both carry the same 36 measures and a release-year identifier so a single PLACES annual release can be isolated or multiple releases compared over time.

Data Description

Each record represents one geographic unit (a Census Tract or a ZCTA) for one PLACES release year. For every health measure, the data includes a crude prevalence estimate (a population-rate estimate), a 95% confidence interval for that estimate, and — for most measures — an age-adjusted prevalence estimate with its own 95% confidence interval. Confidence intervals are provided as preformatted ranges (for example, ( 7.4, 12.3)).

The 36 measures span five categories:

Category	Measures
Chronic disease	Arthritis, current asthma, cancer (excluding skin), COPD, coronary heart disease, depression, diagnosed diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, chronic kidney disease, stroke, obesity
Health behaviors	Current smoking, binge drinking, no leisure-time physical activity, sleeping less than 7 hours, current e-cigarette use
Prevention	Cervical cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening, mammography, dental visit, cholesterol screening, taking blood-pressure medication, core preventive services for older adults, flu vaccination, HIV testing
Health status	General health (fair or poor), mental health (frequently not good), physical health (frequently not good), all teeth lost
Disability	Any disability, plus hearing, vision, cognition, mobility, self-care, and independent-living disability

Geographic identifiers follow standard Census conventions: the Census Tract grain is keyed by the 11-character tract FIPS code (2-digit state + 3-digit county + 6-digit tract), and the ZCTA grain is keyed by the 5-digit ZIP Code Tabulation Area. The full per-measure data dictionary is published at https://www.cdc.gov/places/measure-definitions/.

Coverage

Census Tract grain: approximately 83,500 tracts per release, covering all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
ZCTA grain: approximately 32,500 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas per release, covering all U.S. ZCTAs.

Releases are produced annually. The current release is 2025; earlier annual releases back to 2020 are available. Each release year is identifiable within the data so that a point-in-time snapshot can be isolated or a multi-year comparison constructed.

Geographic boundaries follow the 2020 Census tract and ZCTA definitions for release year 2025 onward. Earlier releases used 2010 boundaries through release year 2022 and 2020 boundaries from release year 2023 onward; cross-vintage comparisons should use a Census-published tract or ZCTA crosswalk.

Methodology

PLACES estimates are produced using multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP). This method fits a statistical model to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) — the CDC's large national health survey — and then calibrates the model against U.S. Census Bureau population data and the American Community Survey to generate stable estimates for small geographic areas where direct survey estimates would be too noisy to report.

The ZCTA-grain estimates are produced by rolling the same underlying modeled estimates up to ZIP Code Tabulation Area boundaries.

Additional Notes

Interpreting the estimates. PLACES values are modeled estimates, not direct counts or direct survey measurements. They are best used for describing relative patterns across geographies and for linking neighborhood-scale health prevalence to other place-based characteristics, rather than as exact local case counts. The accompanying 95% confidence intervals should be carried through any downstream analysis.

Joining to other geographies. Because the tract grain uses the standard 11-character tract FIPS, it joins cleanly to block-group–keyed datasets by truncating the block-group GEOID to its first 11 characters, and to county-keyed datasets by truncating to the first 5 characters. The ZCTA grain aligns with 5-digit ZIP-keyed datasets at roughly 95% fidelity; the HUD ZIP-to-ZCTA crosswalk resolves the remainder.

Validation. Tract-level estimates have been checked against American Community Survey median household income, showing the expected socioeconomic gradients (for example, negative correlations between income and diabetes, current smoking, and obesity prevalence), consistent with CDC's own published validation.

Documentation links

CDC PLACES program: https://www.cdc.gov/places/
Measure definitions: https://www.cdc.gov/places/measure-definitions/
Methodology (MRP technical documentation): https://www.cdc.gov/places/methodology/
Census Tract data on data.cdc.gov: https://data.cdc.gov/500-Cities-Places/PLACES-Local-Data-for-Better-Health-Census-Tract-D/yjkw-uj5s
ZCTA data on data.cdc.gov: https://data.cdc.gov/500-Cities-Places/PLACES-Local-Data-for-Better-Health-ZCTA-Data-GIS-/kee5-23sr

Licensing and redistribution. CDC publishes PLACES in the public domain (the dataset's license field on data.cdc.gov reads "Public Domain"; CDC's general policy states most CDC material "is not subject to copyright, is in the public domain, and may be freely used or reproduced without obtaining copyright permission"). Attribution: Source: CDC, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Population Health. Use of this data does not imply endorsement by CDC, HHS, or the U.S. Government.