Primary Care Physician Mapper App Launched

Explore the distribution of primary care physicians by state, county, or census tracts (in metropolitan areas) with the new Primary Care Physician Mapper.

The Primary Care Physician Mapper uses National Provider Identifier (NPI) data, and displays information for any provider who bills Medicare, Medicaid, or certain private insurance companies.

Users can visualize raw counts of physicians or create maps showing the ratio of one or more primary care specialties to the population within a selected geography.

The app, developed by HealthLandscape, is a project of the Robert Graham Center. There is no cost to users. For more information contact us at info@healthlandscape.org or visit www.HealthLandscape.org.

County-level map displaying the population to pediatric physicians in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, region.

Census tract-level map displaying the population to pediatric physicians with a threshold of at least 350 persons per provider in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, region.

Map displaying number and location of pediatricians in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, region.

UDS Mapper: New Features and Updates

Map showing Health Center Program Grantee Dominance by ZCTA, 2011, for portions of Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.


UDS Mapper, a HRSA-funded project directed by the Robert Graham Center, helps inform users about the current geographic extent of U.S. federally (Section 330)-funded Health Center Program (HCP) grantees. It is one of many apps HealthLandscape has developed to visualize unique data sets.

Check out these new features and updates:

Individual Health Center Program Grantee Service Areas

In the Explore Service Area box (formerly the Define Service Area box), there are three optional functions:

• By Geography: View patient and demographic data by Zip Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA).
• New! By Patient Origin: Select individual HCP grantees and see their service areas according to patient-reported Zip Codes.
• New! By Distance: Determine the potential service area included within a driving time or distance to a given point.

Map showing ten-minute drive time around Wheeling, West Virginia.

 

New! Population Indicator Sliders

In the Map Elements box, we've added a fourth tab, Population Indicators. Use this new feature to visualize the following population-based data by ZCTA:

• % of population in poverty
• % of population low-income (less than 200% of poverty)
• % of population not employed
• Low birth weight rate
• Age-adjusted mortality rate (per 100,000)
• % of adults ever told have diabetes
• % of population uninsured
• % of adults with no dental visit in past year
• % of adults who have delayed or not sought care due to high cost
• % of adults with no usual source of care

Data sources: American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 5-year and 3-year estimates; CDC Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) 2010; CDC Vital Statistics 2009; CDC Area Resource File 2011

Use the indicator slider to adjust the rate. You will see the ZCTAs where the rate is greater than or equal to the number that you set on the slider.

Enhanced Rollovers

Roll your mouse over a ZCTA and see a list of up to five HCP grantees with the share of total HCP patients each center sees.

Most Current Data

UDS Mapper uses the most current data sets available, including the 2011 UDS data and the 2006-2010 ACS demographic estimates.

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Take advantage of upcoming training opportunities to demonstrate UDS Mapper's new features:

• Webinar: September 19 (Click here to register. Content has been changed to focus on the new features of UDS Mapper.)

Or, if you're planning to attend the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) Community Health Institute (CHI) conference in Orlando:

• One-on-one training sessions: September 9-11 (To sign up, click here.)
• What's New with the UDS Mapper: September 10
• Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC) training session/learning lab: September 11

Need more info? Click here to contact the UDS Mapper team.

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
 

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.

Data Focus: The American Community Survey

A map generated from HealthLandscape's ACS QuickMaps tool showing percent of persons under 18 below poverty in the Greater Cincinnati region.


HealthLandscape's ACS QuickMaps tool was developed specifically to help you take advantage of the rich data available within the American Community Survey (ACS), the Census Bureau's newest product. Listed below are some FAQs about the survey, and how HealthLandscape makes this data available to you.

Is the American Community Survey the same as the ten-year census?

No. In fact, the ACS replaced the long form of the census in 2010. In simplest terms, the census is conducted every ten years, and is designed primarily to get a "head count," a count of the number of people in the United States and their general characteristics. The ACS is conducted every year and generates 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year data.

What kind of data does the American Community Survey collect?

The ACS collects demographic, social, economic, and housing data such as age, disability, poverty, education levels, race and ethnicity, and employment. (For a full list of topics, click here.)

What is the difference between 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year data?

Refer to the Census Bureau's chart for a detailed explanation. In general:

• One-year data is 12 months of collected data, and describes areas with populations of 65,000 or more. It is the most current data, but it is also based on the smallest sample size, so it is less reliable than 3-year or 5-year data. One-year data is not available for small geographies.
• Three-year data is 36 months of collected data, and describes areas with populations of 20,000 or more. It is less current than 1-year data, but more current than 5-year data. Three-year data is available for small geographies.
• Five-year data is 60 months of collected data, and describes areas with populations of all sizes. It is the least current, but is based on the largest sample size and is therefore the most reliable. Five-year data is available down to the census tract level.

The data is updated every year. So, for example, in December 2011, 2006-2010 5-year estimates were released. At the end of 2012, 2007-2011 5-year estimates will be released.

HealthLandscape uses 5-year ACS data in our QuickMaps tool, and 5-year, 3-year, and 1-year data in our Community HealthView tool.

Where can I get more information about the ACS data sets included in HealthLandscape?

We publish metadata (data about the data) for each data set.

If you're using QuickMaps, look at the bottom center of the screen. You'll find general information about the data set, and a link to the Census Bureau for more information.

If you're using the Community HealthView tool, enter "American Community Survey" in the search box to locate ACS data. Then click the "about" link next to the data set. You'll see detailed metadata, including an abstract, type of data (1-year, 3-year, or 5-year), whether it's state, county, or tract-level data, what fields are included in the data set, and other useful information.


All ACS data is downloadable from the Census Bureau's web site. Our goal at HealthLandscape is to do some of that hard work for you, to make public data sets available in a way that's immediately useful to you and your organization. We want to help you show the need, tell your story, and explore alternatives.

Sign up for an Intro to HealthLandscape webinar to see ACS QuickMaps and Community HealthView in action. If you have specific questions about HealthLandscape or the American Community Survey, contact us at info@healthlandscape.org, or call 513-458-6674.