Population Health Mapper Wins at ESRI User Conference!

HealthLandscape is recognized as one of the top three GIS applications at the ESRI 2015 User Application Fair.

HealthLandscape is privileged to regularly attend and WIN at the User Application Fair for the fifth year in a row. Our very own Jene Grandmont presented the Health Landscape Population Health Mapper.  The Population Health Mapper enables users to select metrics from the seven categories and use a slider bar to set thresholds. By default, thresholds are set at values that represent national benchmarks.  The tool will highlight those counties that are outside of the national benchmark, or will incrementally shade or remove counties depending on how the user modifies the thresholds for selected indicators.  A huge thank you to everyone who participated and allowed us to continue on our winning streak! 

See our account from the ESRI User Conference 2015 here: http://healthlandscape.blogspot.com/2015/08/report-from-esri-user-conference-2015.html 

Claire Meehan
User Engagement Specialist
HealthLandscape

Learn more about the Population Health Mapper Tuesday September 9th at 11:00AM!

Register Here

Learn more about HealthLandscape with our online Webinars and Training

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Report From Esri User Conference 2015

The Esri International User Conference takes place each summer in San Diego, California. The HealthLandscape application is built on the esri ArcGIS platform, so we regularly attend the conference to discuss our work and to stay current in esri technology and trends. It’s a great opportunity to mingle with other data geeks, learn some new tips and tricks, and see what kinds of new and exciting projects our peers are working on. As always, the agenda was packed full of interesting sessions, educational opportunities, and user group meetings.

This year, I had the opportunity to present two moderated session papers on behalf of the team. Both presentations discussed the importance of looking at patients in the context of their home communities, but from two very different perspectives; public health research and individual practitioners.

Accelerating Data Value Across a National CHC Network introduced the new HealthLandscape Geocode API, which allows organizations to append community and social determinants data to patient-level data: giving them a unique way to enrich their investigations of patient-centered outcomes. Appending these types of data will allow for the exploration of clinical and disease-oriented service areas, hotspots, and coldspots. The Community Context of Health Center Patients focused on how we can use population-based big data and geospatial technologies to understand the social and environmental influences on the health of a physician’s patient panel through the idea of Community Vital Signs - as patient vital signs provide a biometric snapshot of an individual’s health status, community vital signs provide an environmental health perspective. Taken together, we can improve the care that patients are receiving. Both of these projects will be featured as detailed blog posts in the coming weeks.

In addition to our paper presentations, HealthLandscape was once again recognized as one of the top three GIS applications in the User Conference Applications Fair. The HealthLandscape Population Health Mapper builds upon the idea of “Place Matters,” a concept discussed in a recent blog. Users can select county-level metrics from seven categories identified by the CDC as recommended Health Outcomes and Health Determinants, using a slider bar to set thresholds and easily identify counties that perform poorly compared to the national average. We've highlighted this tool on the blog and will be hosting a “Population Health Mapper” webinar on Wednesday, August 19th. Click here to register, or contact us by email for more information.

I always enjoy the time that I spend at the Esri User Conference and I never fail to return home with new collaboration opportunities, new skills, and new ideas. I’m thrilled to take home another HealthLandscape award this year, too.

Jené Grandmont
Senior Manager, Application Development and Data Services
HealthLandscape

School-Based Health Center Performance Monitor Wins Award

HealthLandscape's interactive visualization of school-based health center (SBHC) performance was recognized as one of the top three web-based GIS applications in Esri's User Software Applications Fair last week at the 2013 Esri International User Conference in San Diego.

The School-Based Health Center Performance Monitor is based on our Site Performance Explorer, a tool we created to help organizations monitor performance of multiple sites. Specifically, the School-Based Health Center Performance Monitor compares the number of vision, dental, and hearing screening referrals SBHCs complete against benchmarks.

Click here to try it out.

HealthLandscape's School-Based Health Center Performance Monitor shows instantly how well a particular school-based health center is performing against benchmarks.

Each SBHC is mapped and given a red, yellow, or green label according to its performance. When the user's cursor hovers over a specific SBHC, three windows appear, showing how well the center is meeting vision, dental, and hearing screening goals. Users can instantly see which focus area needs attention.

The Site Performance Explorer can be used with any kind of benchmarking data. Organizations select the indicators they want to track and establish benchmark values. The Site Performance Explorer then compares actual performance against goals to give a visual indicator of performance.

We'll be highlighting the Site Performance Explorer in our upcoming "Visualizing Data with HealthLandscape" webinar on Tuesday, July 30, at 2:00 pm. Registration is free. Click here to register or email us for more information.

Thanks, Esri Users, for voting us as one of your favorites. And a shout-out to Blue Raster, our development partner, for winning in the Mobile GIS App category!

will.i.am and i.am.angel Foundation Promote STEM Education Through GIS

Roosevelt High School students presenting their
GIS projects at the 2013 Esri User Conference.

We're at the Esri International User Conference this week and want to share with you two amazing presentations featuring will.i.am and the i.am.angel Foundation's work to integrate geographic information systems (GIS) with STEM education in the East LA neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

will.i.am at the 2013 Esri User Conference sharing his passion
for transforming his Boyle Heights neighborhood via STEM.

will's vision of transforming inner cities into desired places of living includes getting STEM tools into the hands of students at very young ages, and working with companies to invest in coding rooms instead of just basketball courts and football fields.

The first video ("STEM & GIS in Schools with Amber Case, Charlie Fitzpatrick, i.am.angel and Roosevelt High School," 19:24) shows four Roosevelt High School students and the local problems they visualized with GIS:

• The disparity between race, income, and education as described by Jonathan Kozol in his book Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
• Access to parks ("We are a park poor community")
• The high level of visual pollution (excess advertising via billboards)
• The proximity of brownfields to students' residences

In the second video ("Special Guest will.i.am and Jack Dangermond," 39:30), will.i.am shares his passion to instill hope and bring real opportunity to neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, the Fifth Ward (Houston), and the Bronx.

To watch the videos, click here. You'll see the plenary videos listed in the center of the screen. Scroll down and look for the titles shown above. It's a bit of effort to find the videos, but worth it.

HealthLandscape is built on the Esri ArcGIS mapping platform. Contact us at info@healthlandscape.org to see how we can help you map your neighborhood.

HealthLandscape Presents Three Papers at 2012 Esri International User Conference

HealthLandscape was well-represented at the Esri International User Conference in San Diego, California, this week.

Jené Grandmont, HealthLandscape's Data Manager, presented "The Relationship Between Obesity and Poverty: Bivariate Spatial Visualization" during the Access to Health Foods and Health Outcomes session. She demonstrated how HealthLandscape's bivariate spatial visualization tool enables users to create maps based on percentile distributions of multiple variables. These maps better illustrate the relationship between variables such as obesity and poverty. Click on the video to see a quick demo of the tool.

Sean Finnegan of the Robert Graham Center, presented "Visualizing the United States Healthcare Workforce." This paper, coauthored by Jené, focused on using HealthLandscape interactive mapping and data visualization tools to display health workforce data from both the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services National Provider Identifier database. HealthLandscape's tools help users gain a better understanding of where physicians and other professionals are serving and where there are differences between the two databases.

Jené also presented the Facts Matter Data Portal, Greater Cincinnati's regional data portal, which was launched June 1. The data portal allows policymakers and community leaders to visualize the community indicators that are most relevant to Greater Cincinnati.

Why do we attend Esri's user conferences? The HealthLandscape app is built on the Esri ArcGIS platform, and it's important for us to stay current in technology and trends. We translate the complex underlying technology into an easy-to-use interface, which makes data visualization accessible to GIS and non-GIS professionals alike.

Congratulations also go out to Jené for being one of the top three female finishers at the conference's 5K run/walk. Jené, an avid runner, also competed in Cincinnati's Flying Pig Marathon in May.

For more information about the bivariate spatial visualization tool, health workforce data, or the Facts Matter data portal, contact us at info@healthlandscape.org.

Coauthors of "The Relationship Between Obesity and Poverty: Bivariate Spatial Visualization": Mark Carrozza, HealthLandscape's Health Informatics Developer, and Carolyn Borton and Stephen Ansari, both of Blue Raster. 

Coauthor of "Visualizing the United States Healthcare Workforce": Sean Finnegan, Robert Graham Center.

Coauthors of "Greater Cincinnati Data Portal": Ed Carl, Mark Carrozza, and Michael Topmiller of HealthLandscape; and Facts Matter data/funding partners Eric Avner of the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation; Eric Rademacher, Institute for Policy Research, University of Cincinnati; Jennifer Chubinski, The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati; and Shiloh Turner, Greater Cincinnati Foundation.