46 - Leveraging data visualization techniques and surveillance data to tell a short(er) story

Abstract Information: Health surveillance data from population-based surveys are an important source of information to track progress towards strategic goals and characterize the burden of health conditions and their associated risk factors. Although these surveys provide a rich source of data, finding ways to effectively communicate the main story of the results to a broad audience can be challenging. Typical approaches to disseminating data from these surveys include comprehensive reports that are lengthy and time consuming to read, compilations of detailed tables that can be hard to understand for broader audiences, and data briefs or fact sheets that are accessible but generally focus on a single aspect of the results. To tell the story of tobacco use and attitudes in Indiana, Professional Data Analysts (PDA) and Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation (TPC) developed a visual summary that utilized data from the state’s Adult Tobacco Survey. This poster will describe the process used to address the practical challenge of identifying the subset of data to include in the summary and approaches used (e.g., ChangeLab Solutions, first-person language) to frame the social context and justice issues that lead to tobacco-related disparities. The poster will also describe the data visualization techniques leveraged to highlight key findings and enhance the document’s approachability and use by partners and the general population.

Relevance Statement: Health surveillance data provides key information to help guide programmatic approaches and funding for state health departments and their partners. These data can also be used to help educate partners and the general public about the burden of health conditions and/or their risk factors. However, it is challenging to create a document that effectively summarizes health surveillance data in a way that is short enough to be approachable for a broad audience and still provides sufficient background for partners to understand and use the data. With this poster, we seek to share our experience creating a broad-use highlights document and the principles used to guide the development of this document. Our goal is to engage attendees in a dialogue about effective approaches of telling a story with data and provide an example for other evaluators who work in a variety of fields that regularly communicate information from large-scale data sources to community partners and the public. This poster will cover the AEA guiding principles of Systematic Inquiry and Respect for People by explaining our approach to designing and presenting data. It will address the AEA competencies of Context and Methodology.