Earlier this month, in collaboration with Forum One Communications, HDC founding member Calfornia HealthCare Foundation produced a guide called “Worth a Thousand Words: How to Display Health Data,” describing case studies and best practices in health data visualization. We spoke with Andy Krackov, Senior Program Officer at CHCF, about what data visualization topics were meant to be tackled and goals his organization had in mind when creating the guide.
What is the how-to guide and who will use it?
There are now many off-the-shelf and free data visualization tools to help organizations create their own health data visuals. One key aim in offering this guide was to provide some helpful background and tips when creating a health data visualization and to catalog some of the tools that now are available for broad use.
You say a picture is worth a thousand words. How do you think better visualization can change health?
Health-related topics often are complex, and visually showing disparities and important trends – for example, as a bar graph or a map – no doubt can be helpful for the many audiences we need to reach, from health care consumers to policymakers. So part of the aim in visualizing health is to raise awareness and help describe problems. Another goal is to effectively leverage the data to change behaviors, policies, etc., and to do that, an effective visualization certainly can be an important step for turning data into action.
All Over the Map: Elective Procedure Rates in California Vary Widely, a case study in the guide on heat maps
We have so much health data today, and making it meaningful, comprehensible, and actionable seems critically important. We do need to do better, but why is it so challenging?
Not only is there more data than ever, there’s so much more communication these days than, say, 5 years ago. Just think of the growth in social media, for example. That makes it all the more important, and challenging, to create health visuals that leave an impact – that is, visualizations that can engage and cut through the clutter. Also, there’s an inherent and understandable tension in taking complex health topics and turning them into simple visual messages. Those who “own” the data and know the meaning understandably are concerned about effectively describing the nuances, yet a complicated visual likely won’t do anyone any good.
CHCF has made a real commitment to projects like this and have also supported numerous events and competitions around health data. Could you talk to the importance of health data and better visualization for the state of California?
As in other states, there are so many pressing issues affecting both the the health care delivery system in California and the many communities across the state trying to improve local health. Not only do we need transparency to inform how our communities and delivery systems are doing, we also need to transform these data into useful visuals that can help providers, policymakers, and others harness the data that increasingly are available in the public domain.
You’ve seen a great many organizations find creative and compelling ways to communicate their health data. Do you have a personal favorite you’d like to share?
There’s a center at the University of California at Berkeley – kdmcBerkeley. We’ve recently funded them to provide data visualization trainings for state staff and nonprofits. As they show in their trainings, it’s amazing to see what can be accomplished simply by using, say, Google Docs to create a data visualization, then embed it into your own site. Trainings such as these no doubt can help increase the literacy around data visualization. I also just noticed that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Michigan just created a new style guide, Visualizing Health.
CHCF’s guide to health data visualization and additional resources that foster health data liberation and innovation can be found in our resources section of the HDC website.