Data Analytics Resources Can Inform Population Health Efforts

May 13, 2021 - Over the past year, data analytics resources have become essential tools for organizations and policymakers seeking to enhance their population health efforts – even more so than before the pandemic.

With increased access to community-level data, leaders can target their strategies and deliver care to those patients who need it most.

This was the main idea behind a recent move by the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. The institution has announced the release of interactive maps and analytics tools to provide a deeper understanding of the pandemic’s socioeconomic impact.

These resources can help federal officials recognize where the impacts of the virus are most severe, down to the county level. Additionally, these tools reveal with demographic groups and areas of the economy may require recovery support.

When COVID-19 first began to spread across the US, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) launched the Data and Assessment Working Group (DAWG) to manage recovery data and assess needs across multiple federal offices.

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FEMA enlisted Argonne to provide data analytics support for these efforts. The lab went to work on building a web-based portal, gathering more than 100 data sources, and developing an initial set of analyses.  

“It was an all-hands-on-deck scenario,” said portal project leader Carmella Burdi, a senior geographic information systems analyst with Argonne’s Decision and Infrastructure Sciences (DIS) division.

“We tapped economists, infrastructure analysts, all the smartest people we could find to do comparisons between pre- and post-pandemic data sets. That allows us to put a finer point on things than other agencies.”

Coordination among various agencies has allowed Argonne to expand the scope of data collection and analysis.

“What is so daunting about the COVID-19 pandemic is the overwhelming scale. That’s exactly why an analysis effort like this is so important. Trying to get our heads around what’s happening in the entire United States, including all 50 states and all the territories in the Atlantic and Pacific, in all the counties and all the communities is challenging,” said Iain Hyde, deputy director of the DIS division’s National Preparedness Analytics Center.

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“That’s the major purpose for this effort — trying to make sense of that. The data sources we’ve been gathering and the products we’ve developed are providing clarity to that story, not just as a snapshot in time but in terms of how the pandemic is changing over time.”

The interactive tools include a map that shows how COVID-19 has impacted gross domestic product in particular US counties. On another map, users can see how the pandemic has affected state and local government revenues.

Other resources show metrics like risk of household foreclosure or eviction, the most and least financially vulnerable counties within a state, and household accessibility to broadband.

“Those of us who get into emergency management do so because we want to help save lives and help our communities flourish after something terrible happens,” Burdi said. “Getting our work out there to the most people possible is extremely important.”

With these publicly available tools, the Argonne team believes policymakers can better target their population health efforts.

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“The data we’re collecting is trying to give people perspective on the starting point for the recovery, and give them the information they need to develop a road map moving forward as to how we rebuild the economy, create jobs, help people stay in their housing — and make our communities less susceptible to the next pandemic,” Hyde concluded.

In Chicago, leaders are also aiming to make data analytics resources more widely available. An announcement from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) revealed that the Chicago Health Atlas will move from the City Tech Collaborative to the UIC School of Public Health.

This move will extend the reach of the Chicago Health Atlas, a free community health data resource that allows residents, researchers, and policymakers to easily find and analyze neighborhood-level health data.

“UIC is proud to serve Chicago, its communities and its public health students, researchers, advocates and policymakers by taking on the Atlas and expanding its capabilities and reach,” said Dr. Wayne Giles, dean of the UIC School of Public Health.

“Policies that impact public health are only as good as data that informs them, and the Chicago Health Atlas is among our greatest assets in Chicago for understanding the needs of our communities.”

Spanning Chicago’s 77 community areas, the Atlas is managed through a partnership between UIC’s School of Public Health, Metopio, and the Chicago Department of Public Health.

To date, more than 150,000 new users have accessed Chicago Health Atlas datasets.

“Since its creation, the Chicago Health Atlas has empowered individuals and organizations to understand and take action on the many interrelated factors that influence our communities’ health and wellness as well as the health disparities affecting residents,” said Brenna Berman, CEO of City Tech Collaborative.

“I am confident that the UIC School of Public Health is the best organization to carry this mission forward and put information directly in the hands of those who need it most.”

In addition to its move to UIC, the Chicago Health Atlas will move to a new platform and include new advanced analytics capabilities. The School of Public Health’s recently-launched Population Health Analytics, Metrics, and Evaluation (PHAME) Center, led these updates and will oversee the Atlas going forward.

“When users visit the Chicago Health Atlas, they will now have more tools at their fingertips to understand what is happening in the city and to tackle equity and health issues,” said Sage Kim, associate professor of health policy and administration at the UIC School of Public Health and co-leader of the PHAME Center.

“We’ve added advanced analytics capabilities that allow users to better explore the associations between multiple factors; enhanced visuals, such as hot spot analysis tools, that can help illustrate spatial patterns and clusters of data; and we are committed to community engagement in data utilization.”