Friday, April 29, 2016

Community HealthView Updates

HealthLandscape’s Community HealthView tool enables users to search a database to find publicly-available datasets and map them by state or county. Users can customize the way their data are displayed with different options for color scheme, palette, number of categories, and distribution. Current major datasets include Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) rates and measures; American Community Survey (ACS); Area Resource File (ARF); Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS); CDC Wonder; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rates, costs, and utilization; Dartmouth Atlas; Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE); National Cancer Institute State Cancer Profiles; Robert Wood Johnson Ranked Measures; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Environment Atlas.

American Community Survey (2010-2014)
The ACS is an annual survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau to capture current information on Americans and the workforce. The most recent five-year estimates (2010-2014) are now available in Community HealthView. These datasets include demographic,  socioeconomic, and housing information, such as age, race, education, family type, employment, income, language, age of housing structures, and housing without plumbing, among many others.

CMS Multiple Chronic Conditions (2014)
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services releases yearly updates to their multiple chronic conditions data. HealthLandscape updated the latest 2014 CMS data release in 2016 to Community HealthView. These data include disease prevalence and Medicare utilization and spending for multiple chronic conditions. Each of these data sets includes statistics for all Medicare beneficiaries, those less than 65, and those 65 and over.

CMS Chronic Conditions (2014)
Another set of data that CMS releases annually is the chronic conditions dataset. These data show the percentage of various conditions by Medicare beneficiary age group (total, less than 65 years, 65 and over). The data describe the percent of these Medicare beneficiaries by county with conditions such as arthritis, cancer, depression, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, stroke, among others. These data were updated in 2016 for data year 2014.

CMS Geographic Variation (2014)
The third CMS related dataset that HealthLandscape has recently updated in Community HealthView is the 2014 Geographic Variation data. These data provide a spatial background on the distribution of various healthcare services that CMS recipients receive across the United States. Each indicator is represented as a cost and percent utilization. Some of these data include imaging, hospice care, outpatient dialysis, tests, emergency department visits, durable medical equipment, and Medicare Part B costs and utilization.

Health Indicators Warehouse (2011-2013; 2009-2013)
The Health Indicators Warehouse (HIW) releases data by single- or multiple-year on an annual basis. HealthLandscape has updated Community HealthView with the 2013 HIW prevalence data for several datasets for aggregate data years, 2011-2013, and where applicable, 2009-2013 aggregates. HIW data have been updated for several indicators including cancer and heart disease deaths, years of potential life lost, and infant mortality.

Looking forward
In the coming months, HealthLandscape will be updating Community HealthView with many more datasets that haven’t been updated in several years. Some of these will include data on 2014 Supplemental Security Income Recipients, the 2010 USDA Food Deserts, 2010-2012 HIV Prevalence from HIW, 2010-2011 Internal Revenue Service Migration Data, 2015 Census Population Estimates, and the 2016 Robert Wood Johnson Ranked and Additional Measures data.

For live updates on what will be updated next, follow us on Twitter!

David Grolling
GIS Specialist
HealthLandscape

Monday, April 25, 2016

UDS Mapper Learning Opportunities



If you have been following HealthLandscape, you are well aware that there are many exciting applications and tools that HealthLandscape has to offer. One of our most most used tools, the UDS Mapper, now has new learning opportunities available! Below are the webinars HealthLandscape will be demonstrating for the UDS Mapper. Whether you are hoping to develop your professional or personal capabilities, we encourage you to take advantage of these FREE opportunities to learn more about HealthLandscape

The Introduction webinar provides a general introduction the the UDS Mapper, a mapping and decision-support tool driven primarily from health center pateint location data witihin the Uniform Data System (UDS).  This webinar is geared toward users who are new to the UDS Mapper or in need of a refresher.

Our Advanced webinar is a community assessment case study that introduces users to advanced tools within the UDS Mapper. This webinar will show users how to apply the UDS Mapper to community assessment, while teaching how to use the more advanced tools including the Population Indicators. It is geared toward users who have experience using the UDS Mapper or have attended the Introduction webinar. 

Webinar
Date
Day
Time
Registration Link
Introduction to the UDS Mapper
6/10/2016
Friday
11:00 AM
Introduction to the UDS Mapper
7/14/2016
Thursday
2:00 PM
Introduction to the UDS Mapper
8/9/2016
Tuesday
11:00 AM
Introduction to the UDS Mapper
9/19/2016
Monday
2:00 PM
Advanced Use of the UDS Mapper
6/16/2016
Thursday
2:00 PM
Advanced Use of the UDS Mapper
7/19/2016
Tuesday
11:00 AM
Advanced Use of the UDS Mapper
8/15/2016
Monday
2:00 PM
Advanced Use of the UDS Mapper
9/28/2016
Wednesday
11:00 AM

 
If our webinars do not address do not fit your schedule or address your concerns do not hesitate to Contact Us for a personalized webinar. We are proud of HealthLandscape and are always excited to teach those who are eager to learn! 

Claire Meehan
User Engagement Specialist
HealthLandscape 


Friday, April 15, 2016

Give Us an Earful - Please!

Almost every one of us has been on at least one side of an IT support episode.  Not always pleasant; occasionally dreaded, these IT support calls and emails and chat boxes help us connect to and use the technology that has been created to make our lives “better”.  Speaking as someone who has been on both sides of these calls, I’m here to tell you that even us IT support staff hesitate when we have to call for IT support, worried that our question will sound ridiculous to the experts.  But without those “ridiculous” questions, good IT designers would never know where users are having problems accessing and using their programs.  Good trainers and curriculum developers would not know what aspects to focus on or where their materials are falling short.  Basically, we rely on your input to make our tools and support materials better.

One of the great things about supporting the users of our online mapping tools is learning about all the “off-brand” ways you are using them.  These workarounds give us ideas for new functionality to add to existing tools; new datasets to add; new tools to build; or new support materials to let others know how you are using the tools.  For example, including the ZIP Code to ZCTA crosswalk on the UDS Mapper website was a user request.  And we wouldn’t have the “by Patient Origin” or “by Distance” modes in the UDS Mapper if users hadn’t spoken up about ways they need to look at the data.  We’d love to hear from you to learn more about how you are using the HealthLandscape suite of tools to meet your needs, especially if you are using them in unique ways.

So please send us an email: support@healthlandscape.org and let us know how we can help you.

Jennifer Rankin
HealthLandscape
Senior Manager, Research and Product Services

Monday, April 11, 2016

From Health Promotion to HealthLandscape

Last week we talked about Social Determinants of Health and their integration into primary care practice. This made me reflect on my journey from writing my undergrad research paper on The Effects of Socioeconomic Status on Health as a Health Promotion student to my position now at HealthLandscape.

During my time at George Mason University most of education was focused on general personal health and healing those who might be deemed “unhealthy” mentally or physically.  However a few classes at the end of my school career looked into the relationship between health promotion and social determinants of health and started to shift my focus. We had open discussions on focusing on preventive health and looking into health of communities and defined populations. More and more I started hearing about the concept that someone’s ZIP Code was more important than their genetic code.

My initial interest in the major of Health Promotion was the having the opportunity of just touching favorably on the lives of others through improving health in individuals. I had always imagined this as a one-on-one experience. But as the conversation changed to preventive health, the idea of helping communities and defined populations appealed to me. This is why I am still so excited to be part of HealthLandscape. Our tools help bring together various sources of health, socio-economic and environmental information in a convenient, central location to help answer questions about and improve health and healthcare. Although my position now might seem like a stretch from my initial goals and passions for improving health; I like to think of myself as a link in the chain for health and health care.

Claire Meehan
HealthLandscape
User Engagement Specialist


For more information about HealthLandscape visit http://www.healthlandscape.org/

Join one of our upcoming webinars!

Friday, April 1, 2016

Family Physicians Debate Social Determinants of Health

HealthLandscape has long recognized the value of Social Determinants of Health - the idea that socioeconomic and demographic characteristics play significant roles in influencing health outcomes. This idea has been gaining traction over the past few years, with organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releasing new guidelines on Health Outcomes and Determinants.

In their March/April 2016 issue, the Annals of Family Medicine ran three pieces discussing the integration of social determinants of health into primary care practice.




Alongside our colleagues at OHSU and OCHIN, Dr. Andrew Bazemore and Jené Grandmont represented the HealthLandscape team in the authorship of the main editorial article, "Perspectives in Primary Care: A Conceptual Framework and Path for Integrating Social Determinants of Health Into Primary Care Practice." This editorial discusses the importance of incorporating social determinants of health into the process of care. The article addresses the idea of standardizing the SDoH to be collected at the point of care, in line with the 11 domains recommended by the National Academy of Medicine in their 2014 report "Capturing Social and Behavioral Domains and Measures in Electronic Health Records." Further, the piece begins to explore an integration framework, considering how SDoH might best be used for practice and research.

The follow-up point/counterpoint section features two physicians debating the benefits of placing social determinants of health onto a primary care physician's already overloaded plate. While both writers recognize the value of incorporating patient and community data, opinions differ on what the physician's role in that process should be and how effectively a physician can use that information to help their patients.

It will be interesting to see where these conversations take us in the world of health care delivery, and we're excited to be a part of it.

Want more information about social determinants of health? Visit our Population Health Mapper to explore community characteristics and health outcomes in your area or check out the HealthLandscape Community Vitals API, a powerful tool that allows researchers and others to append extracts of the HealthLandscape community data pool to their de-identified clinical records in order to study the impact of social and behavioral factors on health outcomes.



Register for our online Webinars to learn more about HealthLandscape