Rural Health Department Uses GIS to Enhance Communication Efforts and Information-Sharing Practices

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, local health departments (LHDs) have amplified the importance of distributing reliable information to the public. Since 2020, public health officials have been working to fight COVID-19, though there has been no consistent method or vehicle to disseminate the vast and often changing information. This has caused much confusion and panic in local and global communities. As a result, misinformation about the virus has spread at alarming rates.

Otsego County Department of Health (DOH), located in upstate New York, was able to put together interactive dashboards using geographic information system (GIS) tools to help convey accurate information and consistent messaging to the community.

“Although we are still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic daily, our After-Action Reporting and Lesson’s Learned activities are being completed to better understand our shortcomings, especially during the initial stages of the pandemic response,” said Abigail Mosenthin, public health educator.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for LHDs to be better at providing accurate, consistent, and simplified information to the public. This is a systemic issue across all levels of pandemic response from federal to local governments. 

Otsego County DOH already had experience with distributing health information to the community; however, it has never faced a situation so dynamic and with such heightened public awareness as COVID-19. Traditional methods of communication such as daily press releases, radio messages, and social media postings were used to distribute information. These forms of communication had always been effective and adequate to get information across on more static type health emergencies (e.g., food-borne illness stemming from a specific restaurant location).

As the pandemic raged, it was clear that traditional communication methods needed to change. Daily press releases were effective, but they were not a reliable source to trend data against previous days, weeks, and months, which were the kinds of questions and requests Otsego County DOH received. Due to the constant need for data updates, Otsego County DOH was overwhelmed and unable to organize the information being sent out. The need for a modern communication tool that allowed the department to report and update the public in real time was obvious. At first, the Otsego County DOH started graphing and charting through an Excel database and posting screenshots of those charts to the department website. This was good for answering some questions and showing the statistical correlations, but it was extremely limited in the depth of what could be covered. Requests for more refined datasets were still being received despite these charts. And the requests were now coming from the public, town and county officials, and state officials looking to trend data on their end. It consumed a lot of time and effort for an already weary staff. At this point, Otsego County DOH decided to leverage GIS technology as a communications tool.

“We were seeing GIS dashboards that had been created at state and federal levels and were thinking we could try something similar at our local level,” said Mosenthin.

Otsego County is a rural area with a diverse population.

“It was crucial for us to have a tool to disseminate accurate but also simple data in a timely and consistent manner that all members of our community would understand,” said Alex Scorzafava, emergency preparedness coordinator.

Using ArcGIS Experience Builder, which amplifies data, maps, and apps all in one place, Otsego County DOH was able to make these dashboards user-friendly across multiple platforms such as mobile and desktop versions. Folks using their cell phones could have the same experience as those on their personal computers. The use of Esri software and dashboards were perfect tools.

The mobile version of the Otsego County Department of Health’s public-facing COVID-19 dashboard shows demographic information and current and historical COVID-19 data. 

By using interactive maps in these dashboards, residents can see how many COVID-19 cases were diagnosed within each ZIP code area. These dashboards also contained information on weekly case rates, community transmission levels, number of hospitalizations and deaths, and vaccination rates. Historical data is also maintained within the dashboard for easy reference.

“Esri software allows for a quick and seamless weekly update to the data source driving the public-facing dashboard,” said Scorzafava. “To the public eye, the dashboard looks the same and conveys the same consistent message each day with only the data points changing.”

Otsego County DOH has received so much positive feedback from the public and community partners that it has taken a similar approach to disseminate influenza data. It has since established an influenza (flu) dashboard that is similar to the COVID-19 dashboard. Staff were able to customize the dashboard to meet specific targets. For example, the influenza dashboard allows residents to break down cases by age group. This is particularly important to portray to the public as this year’s flu season seems to be causing illness in children aged 18 and younger at a higher rate than those over 18. 

“The ease of manipulating data and the dashboards within ArcGIS was a huge advantage in allowing us to do this,” said Mosenthin.

GIS software and data analysis will play a major role in the future of public health and human services.

“We are excited to have this new tool at our disposal and thankful to Esri for allowing us to bring this service to our local community in such a timely fashion,” said Mosenthin.