In January of this year, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) launched our new Profile Study Dashboard. Shortly after, the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice (JPHMP) published an article exploring the dashboard’s purpose, background, and user feedback. Conducted every three years since 1989, NACCHO’s National Profile of Local Health Departments (Profile) Study is the most comprehensive and most reliable data source on the infrastructure and practice of local health departments (LHDs) in the United States (US). The new dashboard enhances this data, offering users an interactive experience with interactive visualizations and new features for deeper insights.

Dashboards make complex data more digestible for users through interactivity and intuitive visualizations. With the goal of prioritizing user experience, NACCHO partnered with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) to create a dashboard presenting the National Profile Study data in an accessible and engaging format.

Before developing the dashboard, identifying and understanding users’ needs was a key priority. ASTHO led a collaborative discovery process, conducting interviews with a variety potential users, including federal, state, and local public health leaders. Through these conversations, five major dashboard capabilities emerged, each aligning with the diverse needs of these stakeholders:

• Data storytelling to help users make sense of and apply the data
• Easy-to-access key findings to allow users to easily share the data with their stakeholders
• Options to cross tabulate in a way that would align with how users are already exploring the data
• Comprehensive filters that enable users to drill down and compare groups of LHDs to another group (e.g., rural to non-rural)
• Novel yet consistent design to catch users’ attention and support ease in finding pertinent information

To accommodate these needs, the dashboard offers multiple data visualization options for each topic area, depending on data availability. These visualizations include point-in-time or longitudinal line charts, along with comprehensive filtering based on LHD characteristics. By providing dynamic data visualizations and comprehensive filtering capabilities beyond what’s possible in the static report, the dashboard empowers users to compare LHD categories, track trends over time, and conduct in-depth analysis.

The dashboard also supports practical use-cases across a diverse range of public health practice through its special features. First, the data stories weave insights from a variety of NACCHO’s research efforts together with narrative to contextualize National Profile Study findings within the broader public health landscape. These stories can be used to advance advocacy and public health education, or inform stakeholders; one LHD leader noted:

“Telling our story is critical to letting people know about the value of public health. The folks at NACCHO take the data reported by local health departments and translate that into data stories that can be told to people who don’t understand what we do or why we do it … [The dashboard] is going to be a great asset to us to further advance public health.”

Read Our Article in the March Issue of JPHMP

The key findings feature also further enhances the dashboard’s value by synthesizing complex data into high-level takeaways. This at-a-glance view of LHD capacity and trends can be easily downloaded into a slide deck, making it ideal for sharing with a wide audience. Additionally, the cross tabulation and filtering capabilities are especially useful for those interested in comparing data across subsets of LHDs.

The NACCHO Profile Study Dashboard is shaping how local public health is accessed and understood. By presenting national data in an interactive format, the dashboard empowers users to contextualize findings among a deeper understanding of public health. By amplifying the local public health experience, this tool marks a pivotal step in NACCHO’s mission to strengthen and advocate for LHDs.

Read the full article about the dashboard here, and visit the platform today at bit.ly/ProfileDash.

Gwen Davis, MS, MPS, is a Senior Data Communications Specialist at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). She has a background in data visualization and analytics, which she leverages working in support of NACCHO’s major surveys, creating visualizations and messaging to help facilitate understanding of data and findings.

Kellie Perkins, MS, is the Director of Data Communications at NACCHO. With more than 10 years of experience in research, evaluation, and information design in the public and non-profit sectors, she provides data visualization, translation, and storytelling expertise to teams across NACCHO to establish the organization as a thought leader in local public health.