Data As a Communication Tool: Customized Infographics and Health Messages That Resonate with Target Audiences

Background:  CDC has a long track record of regular data releases like those from the surveillance of foodborne and infectious diseases, flu and flu vaccine coverage, behavioral risk factors, and more. Each program at CDC has its own procedures and preferred formats for releasing data. Users must know where and how to find it, and then, export options may be limited or not available at all. And therein lies the challenge. To be truly useful, data must be deciphered to convey specific actionable messages and then must be delivered to the target audiences that need it most, in formats they can understand and easily use.

Program background:  The data.CDC.gov platform publishes selected data in ways that give end users the ability to easily filter and create visualizations in bar charts, trend lines, and maps. What sets data.CDC.gov apart from other data collection and visualization efforts, is that user-created visualizations from data.CDC.gov can then be embedded in health messages on websites, apps, and social media.  And when CDC updates the data on data.CDC.gov, data within the embedded visualizations is updated. This puts data into action and takes it to the public in innovative ways that are easily consumed.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Data.cdc.gov was quietly launched in August 2013 and as of February 2014, data.CDC.gov has garnered over 300,000 page views and now hosts 123 data sets, and counting. MMWR is now publishing to data.CDC.gov the weekly National Notifiable Diseases and Mortality Tables. Traffic to data.CDC.gov has jumped from 10,000 weekly page views in December 2013 to 15,000 weekly page views since MMWR began publishing to the site in January.  BRFSS has published prevalence and trends data on tobacco use and healthcare access. Other programs at CDC are also publishing data to the site and include data on flu vaccination coverage, leading causes of death, and even CDC.gov web and syndication metrics.

Conclusions:  Data.CDC.gov is CDC’s first consolidated, agency-wide effort to energize data and put it into action not only for ourselves but for our partners and the public. While data.CDC.gov helps us meet the directives of U.S. Government’s Open Data and Open Government Initiatives, the value that data.CDC.gov brings to the public health system is the efficient reuse of quality, evidence-based health data that can be tailored and delivered to the public in easily consumable forms.     

Implications for research and/or practice:  We’re building capacity in state and local health departments by providing evidence-based health data and content for reuse and keeping maintenance at the federal source. Partners can now generate data visualizations via data.CDC.gov, and soon will be able to customize and localize visualizations and infographics for their audiences, either by combining with additional local messaging or by controlled adaptation based on CDC data. Open government and open data also allows commercial health care stakeholders to take this to the next level by sending our science-based health data and visualizations directly to patients and consumers through electronic health records, personal health records, and health monitoring applications and devices.