Data are one of public health’s most valuable assets.

Read the article in JPHMP

They inform our work at a fundamental level: what’s making people sick and killing them? Why? And what can we do about it? In “Evaluating a user-centered redesign of the NYC Environment and Health Data Portal website,” we describe how we measured improvements in the usability of our data communication website following a re-design.

The Environment and Health Data Portal is one of the NYC Health Department’s marquee data communications platforms. We use it to publish datasets on environmental health topics like air quality, asthma, climate, and housing. In the fall of 2022, we launched a major re-design of the website. With the re-design, we tried to make the data accessible to a broad range of potential users by making the site easier to use and explore. We improved our data visualizations and added new types of content like data stories and interactive dashboards that helped explain findings and insights in the data. We improved the look and feel of the website and made sure it worked well on phones and for people who use screen readers or other assistive technology. And we built it on technology that made it easier for us to continue improving the design and functionality, because we knew we wouldn’t get it perfect the first time around.

But it’s not enough to launch a re-design and hope that it’s an improvement – we needed to measure it.

To do this, we used a standard usability instrument called the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire – a 16-item questionnaire used to evaluate interfaces. We recruited users (n=42) and had them do a few simple tasks on the old website, and on the new site. After each site, they would fill out the questionnaire (we used a cross-over design; participants were randomly assigned to look at either the old site first, or the new site first). And we collected qualitative data, asking them to describe their experience with each website.

Our results showed that the new site was a substantial improvement – it scored better overall, with statistically significantly better scores for overall usability, system usefulness, and information quality. And the qualitative data we collected showed us areas where the new site was strong and also identified some areas where we can keep improving.

Why is this work important?

Well, data doesn’t just inform our work – we want it to inform other people’s work, too. After all, public health work doesn’t just take place inside Health Departments. It happens in policies and practices, in communities, in schools, parks, advocacy organizations, hospitals, homes, and everywhere else. Public health work is done by many, many more people than just public health professionals.

So, we’ve got to get our data out there.

But “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work for data. We can’t just publish long scientific reports, dense data tables, and PDFs buried somewhere on our health department’s website and expect them to be useful tools for other public health professionals. We’ve got to make useful visualizations and interactives and engaging narratives that illuminate our findings so people can make sense of the data — all hosted on easy-to-use websites. And we’ve got to evaluate whether we’re successful. In “Evaluating a user-centered redesign of the NYC Environment and Health Data Portal website,” we show how effective this work can be – and we offer health departments a guide for how to evaluate their data communication work.

Matthew Montesano, MPH, is the Senior Director of Data Communication in the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Bureau of Environmental Surveillance and Policy. Matthew manages the Environment and Health Data Portal and supports the agency’s development of evidence-based data visualization and user-centered data communication products.  

Chris Gettings, MA, has conducted research in public health, mental health, criminal justice, and education. He joined the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in 2020, and since 2021 he has worked as a data scientist on the Environment and Health Data Portal, where he develops and maintains the Portal’s full software stack.

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Emily Torem, MA, develops content about environments and health through an equity lens. Emily uses evidence-based communication tools to disperse information about responding to environmental, health, and climate challenges.