State Plates
The Tennessee Health Plate
In Tennessee, health plates turn on coverage and prevalence — who is insured, and what conditions a population carries. This plate places Black Tennessee in the national health geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black Americans, and Tennessee's distribution figures — 1.25 million Black residents, 17 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The coverage figures take their local form in Tennessee, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. About one in ten Black Americans — roughly 9 to 10 percent in the Census Bureau's annual coverage report — has no health insurance at all, a rate above the national figure and above the White rate. Not to rank Tennessee but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
The coverage figures take their local form in Tennessee, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. Rates in this article are for the full population unless stated; nonelderly rates run higher than the all-ages figures because Medicare covers nearly everyone past 65 — one reason the Black uninsured problem is concentrated among working-age adults, as the age breakdown below shows. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating Tennessee, never by ranking it.
For Tennessee, the national health figures are the frame; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the picture inside it. Employer-sponsored insurance is the largest single source, covering about half of Black Americans, through their own jobs or a family member's — a share below the White figure, reflecting the employment and occupational data of this reference: fewer Black workers in the large-firm, high-benefit sectors, more in service, temporary, and small-employer jobs where offers of coverage are thinner. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national midpoint, and the households of Tennessee.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Tennessee; the benchmark rows are the published national health record, labeled as benchmarks. In Tennessee, health measures are survey-based, so the plate carries the survey sources on its face and treats the national pattern as the frame inside which state health agencies publish their own state-level readings.
The Population Behind the Plate
The coverage figures take their local form in Tennessee, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. Tennessee holds about 1.25 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in five of its people, with Black alone at about 1.13 million, or 16 percent. Locating Tennessee is the benchmark's purpose; ranking it is not.
The coverage figures take their local form in Tennessee, where the state rows below set the population behind the national pattern. West Tennessee holds the state's Black center of gravity. The point of the benchmark is position: where Tennessee stands, stated before anything is made of it.
In Tennessee, coverage is the gateway measure: it decides whether the rest of the health system is reachable at ordinary cost. The national Black coverage record, carried here as the benchmark, is the product of federal and state policy layered over the population this atlas counts — and in Tennessee that population numbers 1.25 million. In Tennessee, prevalence measures, from hypertension to diabetes, sit downstream of coverage, which is why this plate leads with the insurance record.
Filed in this series as The Tennessee Health Plate, the plate below states the published record for its subject and reads it closely. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 17%; Black share, alone or in combination: 18%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.25 Million. The plate states Tennessee's record beside its table and lets the record speak.
How this plate is read, for Tennessee: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 17%; Black share, alone or in combination: 18%. In Tennessee, the two presentations are one record in two forms, and a reader who checks one against the other has the plate's whole method in hand.
How this plate is read, for Tennessee: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 17%; Black share, alone or in combination: 18%. Tennessee's map and table are one record in two forms; the reader who checks one against the other holds the plate's whole method.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 17% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 18% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.25 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans without health insurance coverage, approximately | 1 in 10 |
| United States benchmark — Black Americans covered by Medicaid, approximately — and about one in three Black children | 1 in 5 |
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System; U.S. Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States (Current Population Survey). Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.