In 2025, Wilder Research convened a series of Health Topic Advisory Groups, or TAGs, to better understand what is missing from Minnesota’s current health data landscape and identify opportunities for improvement. This article highlights our process for selecting indicators, shares examples of new and enhanced key measures, and provides additional resources to explore the data more deeply.

From community to data: Our collaborative approach

Minnesotans are known for being good neighbors — looking out for one another, listening to their communities, and working together to solve problems. At Minnesota Compass, we strive to reflect those values in everything we do, especially in how we select and develop new indicators that help communities better understand the issues shaping our quality of life.

Now more than ever, engaging community voices in the selection and development of indicators is essential. Data are most powerful when they reflect the lived experiences, priorities, and questions of the people who use them. Our goal is not only to provide trusted information, but also to foster collaboration among organizations, leaders, and residents working to improve outcomes for Minnesotans statewide.

One way we do this is through convening TAGs to advise us on new content or data. With members representing a wide range of sectors, geographies, and lived experiences, TAGs ensure that our efforts are grounded in both credible information and real-world community perspectives, helping transform good intentions into meaningful action.

To start, Health TAG advisors participated in a facilitated discussion to brainstorm measures that could best capture health and well-being across Minnesota communities, geographies, and population subgroups. We asked advisors to consider what information would be most useful in their daily work, how they would tell the story of health in Minnesota, and which measures matter most when assessing quality of life across the state.

Group photo of 26 people who participated in the November 2025 Health TAG meeting
Health TAG members at our November 2025 meeting, representing a wide range of sectors, geographies, and lived experiences.

Wilder staff reviewed advisor feedback, identified common themes, and researched potential data sources for each suggested measure. We then conducted a quality assessment to determine whether each measure aligned with Minnesota Compass standards. We assessed whether that data could be:

  • broken down geographically (statewide, regional, or county-level)
  • analyzed by demographic characteristics such as gender, age, income, race/ethnicity, and others
  • tracked consistently over time
  • obtained reliably, affordably, and on an ongoing basis

Based on this review, Wilder staff identified the most promising indicators and documented the rationale for selecting measures that both aligned with advisors’ priorities and met Compass data standards.

We reconvened Health TAG advisors to verify that the recommended indicators were the “right” ones, identify what (if anything) was missing, and share larger contexts Wilder staff should keep in mind as the data were analyzed, interpreted, and published on the website. Advisors then narrowed the list to several priority indicators to move forward for analysis and publication.

The selected measures are highlighted below.

New and enhanced health measures

  1. Health insurance coverage

    While Minnesota Compass was already tracking health insurance coverage rates using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Health TAG advisors wanted to better understand differences in public versus private health insurance coverage across geographic areas and demographic subgroups.

    Three-quarters of Minnesotans have private health insurance and just under one-quarter have public health insurance (22%). Minnesota continues to have lower uninsured rates than the nation overall: just 6% of Minnesotans under age 65 are uninsured, compared with 10% of the U.S. population. However, the uninsured rate in Minnesota increased from 5% to 6% in 2024—representing approximately 50,000 additional Minnesotans without health care coverage.

    Explore the enhanced indicator: Health insurance coverage

  2. General health

    Advisors were interested in adding a general health measure that captures people’s lived experiences beyond clinical conditions or diagnoses. As a result, we selected a self-reported health measure from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System (BRFSS), a national survey that asks respondents to rate their overall health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor.

    A larger share of Minnesotans report being in good, very good, or excellent health compared to adults nationwide (85% versus 81%). However, after improving during the pandemic, self-reported health in Minnesota has steadily declined and is now at its lowest level in more than a decade.

    Explore the new indicator: General health

  3. Adult mental health

    Health TAG advisors widely agreed that mental health is not adequately measured or reported, and that adding self-reported mental health indicators for both adults and youth would provide a more complete understanding of the mental well-being of Minnesotans.

    To address these gaps, we added a measure of frequent mental distress among Minnesota adults from the BRFSS. About one in seven Minnesota adults report frequent poor mental health. Rates of poor mental health increased during the pandemic and remain elevated today.

    Explore the new indicator: Adult mental health

  4. Youth mental health

    We also added a Youth Mental Health measure based on responses from the Minnesota Student Survey. The share of Minnesota youth reporting symptoms of depression or anxiety increased substantially during the early years of the pandemic but has since declined to pre-pandemic levels or lower. In 2025, 30% of Minnesota youth reported symptoms of depression or anxiety, down from 40% in 2022. 

    Explore the new indicator: Youth mental health

  5. Delayed care

    Finally, advisors noted that data on delayed health care is highly intersectional and reflects a range of barriers to accessing care, including transportation challenges, costs, lack of trust in the health care system, limited appointment availability, and others. To better understand these barriers, we selected a measure of Minnesotans who reported delaying or postponing a health care visit in the past year from the State Health Access Data Assistance Center’s analysis of the Minnesota Health Access Survey.

    One in five Minnesotans reported delaying health care in the past year.

    Explore the new indicator: Delayed care

  6. Social connection

    Multiple Health TAG advisors prioritized social connection as an assets-based indicator that is closely tied to physical and mental health outcomes. Furthermore, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness to be a public health crisis in 2024. Two related components of social connection are important: frequency (or how often people interact with others) and quality (or the depth of these relationships). 

    Our Compass team assembled a new indicator of social connection from the Volunteering and Civic Life Supplement of the Current Population Survey. The new measure focuses on frequency of interactions, estimating the share of Minnesota adults (16+) who have daily conversations or interactions with family, friends, or neighbors.

    Our most recent data show that 60% of Minnesotans talk to or spend time with family, friends, and neighbors daily, up from 53% in the years following the onset of the pandemic.

    This new social connection measure complements our existing Connection to caring adults measure for children and youth, which focuses on the quality of social connections that youth say they have with teachers, other adults at school, and adults in the community.

    Explore the new indicator: Social connection

     

Thank you!

  • Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation for sponsoring our Health TAGs and refreshed Health topic area!
  • State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota for their help compiling data for these measures!
  • Our Health TAG Advisors for their time, insights, and expertise in selecting our new and enhanced measures. We appreciate you!

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