Health Atlas

Healthy Chicago 2.0 and the Chicago Health Atlas

Kyla Williams

This morning marked the launch of Healthy Chicago 2.0: Community Health Assessment and Improvement Plan, by our partner, the Chicago Department of Public Health.

healthy-chicago-2-launch

Here’s their overview:

healthy-chicago-2-0-planThis plan, Healthy Chicago 2.0, is utilizing the Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships model, which was developed by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Association for County and City Health Officials.  Healthy Chicago 2.0 is a four year plan that will outline goals and strategies for Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) and public health stakeholders to implement and work towards improving the health of Chicago residents and communities.

Here’s a link to the entire plan.

Today, in concert with CDPH, we’re launching the Healthy Chicago 2.0 section of the our Chicago Health Atlas website. This section allows CDPH to publicly display progress of 75 indicators for plan goals.

Here’s how CDPH describes it:

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), in collaboration with the Partnership for Healthy Chicago, completed a comprehensive community health assessment in 2015. From these findings, CDPH, the Partnership, public health stakeholders and community residents identified 10 priority areas to focus community health improvement efforts on over the next 4 years. These priority areas include both health outcomes and social determinants of health, as well as public health infrastructure elements like partnerships and data:

  1. Expanding Partnerships and Community Engagement
  2. Improving Social, Economic and Community Conditions
  3. Improving Education
  4. Increasing Access to Health Care and Human Services
  5. Promoting Behavioral Health
  6. Strengthening Child and Adolescent Health
  7. Preventing and Controlling Chronic Disease
  8. Preventing Infectious Diseases
  9. Reducing Violence
  10. Utilizing and Maximizing Data and Research

After completing the community health assessment, CDPH convened ten action teams to develop specific goals, objectives and strategies to address each priority. These goals, objectives and actionable strategies form Healthy Chicago 2.0, Chicago’s four-year community health improvement plan. In total, Healthy Chicago 2.0 outlines 82 objectives and over 200 strategies to help reach 30 goals. In order to measure progress towards each goal, CDPH and action team members identified 75 indicators to serve as annual benchmarks towards our 2020 targets.

The indicators have been categorized into the following sections: Overarching Outcomes, Access, Community Development, Education, Behavioral Health, Child & Adolescent Health, Chronic Disease, Infectious Disease and Violence. Explore the indicator table below to learn more about what CDPH and our partners will be monitoring towards the goal of achieving health equity in Chicago. Check back regularly for implementation updates and the status of each indicator as new data becomes available.

Take a look at the indicators here and, as always,  with any questions.

Healthy Chicago 2.0 Indicators Screenshot

Two New Health Navigators

Smart Chicago

Yesterday we on-boarded two new Health Navigators in our Smart Health Centers program: Anthony Green, who will be working at Family Focus and A.C.T.S. OF F.A.I.T.H., and Daniel Broome, who will work with people at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital.

Anthony Green and Daniel Broome

Kyla Williams runs this and all of our health projects. Yesterday Anthony and Daniel were trained by Patrice Coleman and Diana Beasly. Welcome!

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Help Wanted: Health Navigators

Kyla Williams

Smart Health Center LogoThe Smart Chicago Collaborative seeks to immediately contract with 2 Health Navigators to work in our Smart Health Centers program. The Health Navigator will provide assistance to patients/participants in Smart Health Centers to connect to their own medical records and in finding reliable information about their own health conditions utilizing the internet or other technology tools. This position requires a high level of teamwork, flexibility, and customer focus; the ability to interact with youth, adults, and the general public in an appropriate manner is required.

The ideal candidate will have an interest in community health with great writing and documentation skills. All candidates must be proficient with using basic technology hardware and software, familiarity with social media and comfortable providing health-related information in a creative manner. An added plus would be experience in using lightweight tools such as video, photos, and screencasts to provide feedback to the Smart Health team.

Full details on the position and how to apply can be found here.

Health Data Ecosystem is Strengthened by Purple Binder’s Adoption of Open Referral

Smart Chicago
Joe Flesh of Purple Binder at the Health Data Consortium Event at 1871, November 2013

Joe Flesh of Purple Binder at the Health Data Consortium Event at 1871, November 2013

At Smart Chicago, we work with a lot of partners to encourage the growth and development of the civic innovation sector of the technology industry. There is a nascent ecosystem that thrives on standards and sharing.

Yesterday we were happy to see a big step forward in the ecosystem as it relates to health data and software, when Purple Binder announced that they had adopted the OpenReferral standard. The announcement centers around some with whom we’ve toiled with over the years.

  • Code for America has been a longtime partner of Smart Chicago— we’ve worked with them since our very start. They have been devoted to an OpenReferral standard to help with the sharing of community resource directory data. Code for America is an indispensable national leader in the work that we care about here at Smart Chicago
  • Purple Binder, a Chicago company that matches people with community services that keep them healthy, has been a partner of Smart Chicago since July 2013, when we hired them to create their first API in order to fuel our Chicago Health Atlas project. They’ve been a shining light here in the civic tech scene— a private company building software that matters while helping others in the ecosystem
  • We also work with mRelief, an app that helps Chicagoans determine their eligibility for government benefits. We support them through our Developer Resources and CUTGroup programs. to help Chicago residents see what social services they qualify for.  Both of these applications use data provided by Smart Chicago’s contract with Purple Binder

Purple Binder’s API is the first to use the Open Referral standard to transmit social services data between two applications. This is a big deal, and a moment worth celebrating, with more work ahead.

Launch of Chicago Health Atlas 3.0

Smart Chicago

Last week we launched our third major update to our Chicago Health Atlas project.  This is the most robust version of the Atlas released since its debut in 2012. The Atlas is funded and receives significant thought leadership from the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute. Sprague, and their Executive Director Jim Alexander, has shepherded this program for years.

Chicago Health Atlas, along with all of our other health products like Foodborne Chicago and Smart Health Centers, is managed by Smart Chicago Director of Operations Kyla Williams with lots of help from Program Coordinator Sonja Marziano.

Chicago Health Atlas 1.0

Chicago Health Atlas 1.0

The first version of the Atlas was a simple lookup tool for existing data. DataMade, a local firm that builds custom visualizations, deploys civic apps, and trains people to work with open data, has been an essential tech partner all the way through to this version. The site is based on the Derek Eder’s wildly influential and immensely useful Searchable Map Template. Derek was also important in helping me move from the Weave (Web-based Analysis and Visualization Environment) platform and set up a structure that met Smart Chicago’s vision for the site.

Last year we conducted a CUTgroup test on the Atlas and found that users were a little confused with the original navigation.

Continue reading →

Kyla Williams on WBEZ Tech Shift, Talking Chicago Health Atlas

Smart Chicago

Here’s Kyla WIlliams of Smart Chicago talking about our Chicago Health Atlas project.

For the past year Chicago Health Atlas has tracked the growing amount of health data available to Chicago residents. The hope is that bringing all the information together in one place can help Chicagoans start to improve their own health. Smart Chicago Collaborative Program Officer Kyla Williams oversees the project and joins us in studio to talk about it.