Environmental Justice Index (EJI Index) – Details
The Environmental Justice Index (EJI) is the first national, place-based tool designed to measure the cumulative impacts of environmental burden through the lens of human health and health equity. The EJI scores census tracts using a percentile ranking which represents the proportion of tracts that experience cumulative impacts of environmental burden and injustice equal to or lower than a tract of interest. The indicator summary data displays the number of neighborhoods (census tracts) within the report area exceeding the 90th percentile ranking for environmental justice social criteria or health criteria.
Source
Accessed via CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking.
Source Description
CDC and ATSDR are committed to promoting health equity and to integrating practices that promote health equity into the fabric of all of their activities (Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, 2021; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). Promoting environmental justice is key to advancing health equity. The Environmental Justice Index (EJI) was developed to help inform and focus public health interventions aimed at alleviating health disparities by identifying communities facing the worst cumulative impacts of environmental burdens on health, and to track the success of programs and interventions across time by providing iterative updates for comparison.
Methodology
The Environmental Justice Index (EJI) published in 2022 is developed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) to determine the cumulative impacts of environmental injustice. The EJI incorporates place-based measurements of factors related to distributive and procedural justice and to the cumulative impacts of injustice on health and well-being. Metrics are selected from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for over 71,000 U.S. census tracts. The EJI ranks each tract on 36 environmental, social, and health factors and groups them into three overarching modules and ten different domains. The overall EJI score is calculated by summing the ranked scores of three modules as below. The final EJI ranking is then produced using this score.
For more information about the methodology, please see the EJI Technical Documentation or refer to the Indicator Page for EJI in the CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking website.
Data Breakouts Available
- Environmental Justice Index – Physical Environment Factors – Neighborhoods
- Environmental Justice Index – Physical Environment Factors – Populations
- Environmental Justice Social Factors – Populations
- Environmental Justice Social Factors – Neighborhoods
This indicator is available at the following subscription levels:
- Premium (currently viewing this indicator and report combination)