The heat map is an effective way to present the total health care expenditures by state. Public health data disseminated to the general public is often displayed on maps. This allows the data consumer to visually identify geographic patterns. To further illustrate the impact of smoking, the public health nurse may wish to report the total health care expenditures for the entire country.

For each state, total health care expenditures are related to the size of the population. Given the problem statement, this is appropriate as we are interested in the magnitude of smoking-related health care costs. In other situations, state health care expenditures should be adjusted for population size so that states can be compared equitably. In our next case we will continue our examination of smoking-related costs by comparing state investment in smoking cessation programs. This will require the use of adjusted measures.