Use Case: HealthLandscape and Healthcare Policy Decisions

HealthLandscape is not just the public-access tool you use when you visit www.HealthLandscape.org. HealthLandscape is also a platform on which use-case-specific data visualization tools are built.

In the video below, Bob Phillips and Andrew Bazemore, both of the Robert Graham Center of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) discuss how data visualizations have improved primary care delivery. Andrew (beginning at the 21:30 mark) describes the evolution of HealthLandscape and demonstrates how two tools that AAFP commissioned, UDS Mapper and Med School Mapper, have been used to help legislators make informed, data-driven policy decisions.



Their presentation, made in April 2012, was sponsored by the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute at the Australian National University. APHCRI is developing HealthLandscape Australia, a platform that will visualize Australian healthcare workforce data, as well as other data sets.

HealthLandscape is a joint project of the Robert Graham Center and The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

Collective Impact and Backbone Organizations

Many communities and nonprofits now use the collective impact model to effect long-lasting change. If you're not familiar with the term collective impact, it is a relatively new model that encourages individual organizations to combine initiatives to address complex social problems in large-scale, collaborative ways.

One cornerstone of collective impact is the presence of one or more backbone organizations. A backbone organization is one that, as its name implies, provides structural, behind-the-scenes support to collaborating partners.

The Greater Cincinnati Foundation is one of Greater Cincinnati's backbone organizations. Through GCF and other regional backbone organizations, collective impact partners receive infrastructure, strategy, measurement, funding, and other system-level assistance.

Shiloh Turner, Vice President for Community Investment at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, has been instrumental in bringing Cincinnati's Facts Matter data portal to life. Facts Matter, developed by HealthLandscape, is one tool among many in Greater Cincinnati's collective impact efforts.

Shiloh and coauthors Kathy Merchant, John Kania, and Ellen Martin recently wrote a four-part article, "Understanding the Value of Backbone Organizations in Collective Impact," for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. We've linked to the article below.

Part 1: Making a Commitment to Strengthen Backbone Organizations
Part 2: Key Learning: What Backbone Organizations Do
Part 3: Results of Inquiry: What We Learned
Part 4: What Next? Leading and Learning into the Future

Has your community adopted the community impact model? If so, what backbone organizations exist to support the model?

Facts Matter Community Data Portal Wins First Place at Esri International User Conference

Conference attendees awarded HealthLandscape's Facts Matter community data portal first place in the "Web-Based GIS Application" category at the 2012 Esri International User Conference Software Applications Fair.


A great big thank you to everyone who test drove the Facts Matter Community Data Portal last week at the Esri International User Conference. We appreciate you selecting us as your favorite web-based GIS app during the User Software Applications Fair!

Facts Matter is a custom configuration of our community data portal. It provides the public with data about population demographics, the status of children and youth, education, health, economics, and social relations in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region.

Visit the Facts Matter Data Portal at http://www.crc.uc.edu/FACTSMATTER/index.htm.

Related Topics:

• HealthLandscape Presents Three Papers at 2012 Esri International User Conference
• Facts Matter Data Portal Wins Award at Datapalooza Health App Expo
• Facts Matter, Cincinnati's Comprehensive Data Portal, Is Launched