Hest, Robert
Senior Research Fellow

p 612-624-5507
e hestx005@umn.edu

Updates to Minnesota’s Community and Uninsured Profile: NEW Social Vulnerability Index Information and Updated 2017–2021 Data

Following the release of the 2021 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year data file (2017–2021), SHADAC has made important updates to the Minnesota Community and Uninsured Profile resource to incorporate an analysis of the 2021 data.

The Community and Uninsured Profile now includes new information on the area-level Social Vulnerability at the ZIP code level. This Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) can be used to understand how community factors like: socioeconomic status; household composition and disability; race/ethnicity and language; and housing type and transportation contribute to Minnesota communities’ level of vulnerability and need for social and economic investment. For example, this SVI information was used by public and private organizations to help target testing and vaccine promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Community and Uninsured Profile can be used in two ways: (1) to support community-level investments, equity-focused work, advocacy work, strategic planning, community needs assessments, and grant-writing; and (2) to target health insurance coverage outreach and enrollment efforts.

The Community and Uninsured Profile provides rates and counts of Minnesotans at a range of geographic levels. Users can explore characteristics of the total population and the uninsured population in a specific ZIP code while also overlaying in-depth community characteristics. In addition, users can look at rates and characteristics of the community and uninsured within the state as a whole, by region, county, and state legislative district. Users can also filter by MNsure rating areas—the geographic regions health insurers use to set premiums on MNsure.

The profile can also be used in conjunction with the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Medicaid Renewal Dashboard, which presents state- and county-level information about the number of Minnesota Medicaid recipients due for re-enrollment during the “unwinding” from the pandemic-era Medicaid continuous coverage requirements. Though the Renewal Dashboard can be filtered by SVI quartile, the finer-grained geographic information in the SHADAC Community and Uninsured Profile (ZIP Code) is a useful supplement to help target outreach. For example, navigators could use the SHADAC Profile to find those ZIP Codes within a county that have a high level of Social Vulnerability to pinpoint areas of the greatest need for re-enrollment assistance.

This resource was originally developed as part of “Minnesota’s Uninsured and the Communities in Which They Live,” a project funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation that supports targeted outreach and enrollment activities of health insurance navigators and provides contextual information to Minnesota policymakers as they develop strategies to reach the remaining uninsured in Minnesota.

To access additional information, or request the development of a similar tool for another state, visit the Minnesota Community and Uninsured Profile Resource page.