The NY Vaccine Literacy Campaign (NY VLC) at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) launched its COVID-19 data visualization dashboard today to provide actionable data drawn from nine counties in the New York area and support community-based organizations (CBOs) in COVID-19 education and outreach.
The dashboard, at VaccineLiteracyCampaign.org, is the first to visualize primary data collection of COVID-19 vaccine sentiments, uptake, and needs for health and social services across New York’s lower nine counties: Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), New York (Manhattan), Queens, Richmond (Staten Island), Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland, and Westchester. This follows the recent release of new data on COVID-19 vaccine attitudes and uptake among 1,000 respondents in the region, covering vaccine hesitancy and acceptance, including parents of children under 18 years old.
Led by Dr. Ashish Joshi, CUNY SPH professor and senior associate dean, and developed in conjunction with the NY VLC’s Community Engagement Advisory Council, the data visualization dashboard and website will publicize survey data on vaccine sentiments across the nine lower NY counties.
“The goal of the dashboard is to build an accessible and supportive tool in service of the community partners we work with,” says Dr. Joshi. “Direct service workers and other health practitioners will be able to see which communities are struggling with COVID-19 vaccine uptake, helping them to understand where they, and we, should deploy efforts.”
Multiple data sources were utilized in the development of the dashboard to map vaccine coverage and areas of concern, including quarterly survey panel data conducted by the NY VLC and publicly available datasets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The interactive platform will help users understand, for example, the social and health resources that are most needed in a particular county. Data can be compared at the county level, and Dr. Joshi’s team developed a modified health and social vulnerability index that captures indicators like low intention to vaccinate, prevalence of chronic illness, and health insurance status.
“This dashboard offers the opportunity for our community partners to strengthen their outreach with health literate data in-hand, and it will guide our own team’s efforts to build strong collaborations,” says Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of CUNY SPH.
The site also offers communication resources and tools as an added layer of support for the NY VLC’s community partners and those they serve. The NY VLC develops all its materials in collaboration with community partners. If CBO leaders and direct service workers cannot find the type of material on the site that they’re seeking, they can submit a request directly through the site for additional resources to be developed.
