They call it the silent killer because of its ability to lurk undetected – hardening arteries, stiffening heart muscles, depriving blood from the brain and damaging kidneys and retinas.

Now, high blood pressure may be losing a bit of its ability to hide.

A new color-coded, data-driven mapping tool developed at Wayne State University reveals dangerously high blood pressure readings from an extraordinary perspective: neighborhood by neighborhood.

In this hypertension dashboard, areas with the highest blood pressure readings in four counties – Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, and Livingston - are exposed as a patchwork of deepening shades of orange.

By studying such health data maps, doctors, public health advocates, businesses, policymakers and others can better understand how geography dictates health and even life expectancy. Most importantly, such data can help maximize disease control and prevention efforts, saving both healthcare dollars and human lives.

“You can throw all the medicines you want at the [hypertension] problem, but if you can’t fix the upstream social determinants, you’ll never solve it,” said Dr. Phillip Levy, an emergency room physician at Detroit Receiving Hospital and cardiovascular researcher who developed the tool.

Levy’s work will be presented Thursday at the Detroit Regional Chamber Mackinac Policy Conference.

If all goes well, the map could one day address health disparities at the street level throughout Michigan, combining neighborhood health data with demographic information such as age, race, demographics, income, insurance coverage, pollutants, access to transportation, fresh food and more.

“This is about using information to address adverse health outcomes of the state. We know that heart disease disproportionately affects Detroit, so it makes sense to start there,” he said.

Levy trained in New York and has worked in Detroit for 17 years. He said he’s seen far too many heart attacks and strokes that could have been prevented by better blood pressure control.

In fact, Michigan – a state crisscrossed by hiking and biking trails and parks and lakes - for years has had some of the highest rates nationally for cardiovascular disease, considered one of the most preventable diseases through medication and lifestyle change.

In Michigan, 298 residents for every 100,000 die of stroke, heart failure, and other cardiovascular disease deaths. That’s 42nd in the nation (the healthiest state, Minnesota, is at 190 per 100,000), according to the United Health Foundation, a Minnesota-based nonprofit that compiles the annual America’s Health Rankings report that pulls together a trove of data.

The national rate is just under 257 deaths per 100,000, and only Nevada and mostly southern states such as West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Oklahoma have worse rates than Michigan.

The rate of cardiovascular deaths in Michigan are highest in Wayne County and Detroit, along with counties in the Northeast Lower Peninsula and Thumb, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For Levy, those data points are patients rushed to the ER, followed by the panicked and grieving family and friends: “Telling a loved one that their husband or father died from consequences of high blood, an inherently treatable condition, is really devastating,” he said.

So last year Levy, who also is a professor and researcher at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, again turned to data – this time for a more close-up look and for a solution.