UDS Mapper: Another Great Community Health Data Source

Source: http://www.nachc.com

In honor of National Health Center Week, we're highlighting the UDS Mapper, a tool we developed on behalf of the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) and the Robert Graham Center. Although the UDS Mapper is intended specifically for the use of community health centers, it's a great data source for anyone interested in community health.

Community health centers were started in 1965 to provide primary care and preventive health services to persons with little access to healthcare. Although there were only a few centers at the program's inception, today there are more than 1,200 community health centers and look-alikes (sites that provide community health care services but are not federally funded). They provide care to more than 22 million people who are primarily low-income or part of underserved communities such as migrant workers and those who are experiencing homelessness.

Because most community health centers are federally funded, they have stringent data reporting requirements. They are required to submit data to the Uniform Data System (UDS) annually. Data are collected about:

• Patient characteristics (including age, gender, race, ethnicity, income level, third-party insurance source)
• Special population groups (individuals experiencing homelessness, migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their family members)
• Patients receiving prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum care
• Newborn infants
• Health center staffing
• Clinical indicators
• Services provided
• Utilization rates
• Costs
• Revenues

The UDS Mapper displays UDS data at the ZCTA level, and is free to use. It also has other useful features including:

• Ability to map drive times within a 50-mile radius
• Ability to map service areas
• Incorporation into the HealthLandscape platform, which enables users to access HealthLandscape's Community HealthView data library and QuickThemes and QuickGeocodes tools.

For free UDS Mapper training, sign up via UDSMapper.org.

For free HealthLandscape training, sign up using the links below.

• The Community Data Portal (August 22, 3 pm ET)
• Visualizing Data with HealthLandscape (August 28, 2 pm ET)
• Introduction to HealthLandscape (August 29, 2 pm ET)

Thank you, community health centers, for providing needed services to so many!

Sources: http://www.chcchronicles.org/ and http://bphc.hrsa.gov/healthcenterdatastatistics/#whatisuds, accessed August 5, 2013.