Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me: How to Present Public Health Data to Any Audience
Abstract
Public health is built on a foundation of surveillance, communication, community partnerships, and equity. Communicating data in formats that are user-friendly and easy to understand for not only public health professionals but also for community partners and members of the general public audiences allows for feedback from external audiences and more input from the communities that public health aims to serve, increasing awareness and building trust in the services offered by public health. However, as seen in the past few years, complicated presentations, long reports, and excess use of technical jargon, can often act as a barrier to building these connections.
Thereby, the goal of this workshop is to describe methods for consolidating secondary health data into several types of print and digital mediums in ways that are inclusive and equitable for diverse audiences.
Participants will be able to describe best practices for locating and incorporating health equity-related data sources, as well as how to develop various types of print reports and convert them to a digital medium. Participants will specifically learn how to develop a public-facing health metrics dashboard for the analysis, interpretation, visualization, and reporting of health data to determine and evaluate community health needs. Lastly, participants will explain the importance of incorporating an equitable and accessible framework into the base design, e.g. ensuring all infographics are easy-to-view for those with visual impairments, such as low-vision or colorblindness.
By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to aggregate and analyze health data at various geographic levels to understand place-based inequities and to inform needs assessments, community planning, and resource allocation.
Keywords
Communication, Health Metrics, Community Health, Data Visualization, Equity, Health Promotion
Don’t Just Tell Me, Show Me: How to Present Public Health Data to Any Audience
Public health is built on a foundation of surveillance, communication, community partnerships, and equity. Communicating data in formats that are user-friendly and easy to understand for not only public health professionals but also for community partners and members of the general public audiences allows for feedback from external audiences and more input from the communities that public health aims to serve, increasing awareness and building trust in the services offered by public health. However, as seen in the past few years, complicated presentations, long reports, and excess use of technical jargon, can often act as a barrier to building these connections.
Thereby, the goal of this workshop is to describe methods for consolidating secondary health data into several types of print and digital mediums in ways that are inclusive and equitable for diverse audiences.
Participants will be able to describe best practices for locating and incorporating health equity-related data sources, as well as how to develop various types of print reports and convert them to a digital medium. Participants will specifically learn how to develop a public-facing health metrics dashboard for the analysis, interpretation, visualization, and reporting of health data to determine and evaluate community health needs. Lastly, participants will explain the importance of incorporating an equitable and accessible framework into the base design, e.g. ensuring all infographics are easy-to-view for those with visual impairments, such as low-vision or colorblindness.
By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to aggregate and analyze health data at various geographic levels to understand place-based inequities and to inform needs assessments, community planning, and resource allocation.
