–Women’s Health Report Card (pdf)
Introduction:
Many local and national data sources can be accessed to learn about the status of women’s health in Minnesota (MN). However, no one source provides Minnesotans with a comprehensive review of the specific indicators of and barriers to women’s health. To paint a broad picture of how MN’s women are faring, we have combed through the data and compiled the MN Women’s Health Report Card (MN-WHRC) to provide citizens, public health professionals, policymakers, and others with a short, visual synopsis that highlights key areas of women’s health.To avoid the duplication of other existing efforts, this report focuses on the health of women ages 18 and up unless otherwise indicated. Because the MN-WHRC is intentionally brief, much of the supporting data, citations, and other information are available on this website.
About this Report Card:
Working closely with colleagues and the MN Department of Health’s (MDH) Center for Health Statistics, Child and Family Health Division, and Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Division, we have carefully designed the MN-WHRC to help visualize and reflect the health indicators specific to our state’s unique demographics. The MN-WHRC is produced every other year as new data becomes available, with the intent of providing a comprehensive review and comparison across the years (see 2018 and 2020 MN-WHRCs).
These data reflect the daily experiences of women’s lives and can be used to inform MN’s practice and policies, thus offering the opportunity of improving the short- and long-term health outcomes for women. Finally, recognizing the rich diversity of our state’s immigrant and refugee populations, each Report Card goes through a multi-person team translation and review; the 2022 MN-WHRC is available in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali.
What’s New in 2022:
This 2022 MN-WHRC features a new glossary of terms, sparked by discussions with maternal and child health (MCH) students in the PubH 6630 course, who contribute to each Report Card. The glossary provides Report Card readers with insight into the nuances of language used in the MCH field. This glossary supplement will continue to evolve as our language and understanding of it, especially around gender, also evolves, and as gendered terms are addressed and transformed during data collection.
What else is new since the 2020 Report Card? In this updated Report Card, you will learn that:
- MN’s demographics are changing, and the state is getting more racially diverse, with more data on rural MNs in this MN-WHRC.
- There is more data on LGBTQIA2S+ communities than in past Report Cards, though there are still challenges in reporting on the health of LGBTQIA2S+ Minnesotans due to limited data.
- An “Infectious Disease” section was added and addresses Monkeypox and COVID-19 cases in the state.
- The updated Healthy People 2030 targets show that Minnesotan women continue to lead the nation in some areas of health but others (such as the number of women ages 50-75 who have had a colonoscopy and the number of women who have had a routine check-up in the last year) are falling short of the Healthy People 2030 targets. The COVID-19 Pandemic likely impacted these results.
- There was a local rise in bias-related crimes and intimate partner violence.
About the Data Sources:
The MN-WHRC is produced using various data sources and state reports. The data sources vary based on the year and method of data collection. However, most of the data used for this Report Card are data that were reported from 2018-2021. Some sources only report on an extended periodic basis, while others report annually. For instance, data points such as postpartum depression rely on the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which only reports in two-year increments. The MN 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) provides the latest update on MN’s Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The MN Health Statistics Annual Summary and the MN Adult Prison Population Summary are published annually. Hence, the MN-WHRC shares a mix of data ranging from 2011-2022, and some topic areas use data collected in different years.
Data collection years may be found by clicking on MN-WHRC sources. Unless otherwise indicated, all data are for women aged 18 years or older. Samples size also differs from each data reporting system as well. It is important to show data by race and ethnicity to target resources and interventions for populations that need them most. Though, one of the limitations is that some demographic information provided in the original data sources was not broken down by gender and race/ethnicity.
MN-WHRC Language
The terms “female” and “woman/women” are used interchangeably throughout the MN-WHRC based on the data collection methods and reporting of the original data sources. We recognize that these terms do not include all gender identities, and it is crucial to address the current limitations of language within research and in the MN-WHRC. We recommend that future research and data reporting address the language used in alignment with the populations they are working with. Please see our new glossary for recommendations.