Inspiration
Project leader Minda Aguhob developed a performance report last week to support local #shelterinplace efforts (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maguhob_coronavirus-shelterinplace-s-activity-6647996813846683648-8jvh). Our #Co-Caring Dashboard was based on this performance report.
Minda leads Vytality Health (http://vytality.co), a social support platform to support people's health and caring needs. The organization supports a #co-caring movement of groups, projects and individuals who help each other during regional and global crises. Here are her remarks to the United Nations explaining #co-caring (October 2019 -- http://bit.ly/VytalityUN)
What it does
The #Co-Caring Dashboard displays local, updated COVID-19 spread, and a link to connect people and projects via the "Co-Caring Chat." Under "Resources," we provide information on local health support services like public health departments and hospitals, along with tips and trends on dealing with COVID-19.
How we built it
We built a React web site using dashboards built in Tableau. And, we started a subreddit (http://https://www.reddit.com/r/vytality/) for people to connect and promote local #co-caring efforts.
Challenges we ran into
Our original team included public health data analysts, developers and a co-caring organization. Minda's report, with its COVID-19 projections derived from a simple exponential formula, was very controversial among the analysts, who then helped develop different visualizations. The idea pivoted to a focus on coordinating local #co-caring efforts, EG #shelterinplace and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to slow COVID-19 spread
However, as a former crisis organizer and first responder, Minda pushed to include the original performance report, believing that showing local impact was a critical tool to motivate #co-caring organizers. This dashboard would be especially unique bc of its local data focus, information that is rarely shared publicly. But in order to do the projections correctly, one analyst said it would take over 2 weeks to complete.
Minda asked whether we could have an open conversation with the public about our data, along with transparency about our mixed team. The debate that ensued led to several team members leaving, with analysts continuing to contribute but not lending their names on the project.
Interestingly, a similar project team of "regular folks" wrote this coronavirus Medium article in consultation with experts > "The Hammer and The Dance: What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time" https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56).
Thanks to the innovative thinking of the remaining team, we found an potential way to handle the dilemma. After considering the analysts' recommendations, we found University of Washington's COVID-19 data and decided to find a way to present a performance report using their projections instead (https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections) to create a separate organizer dashboard with the performance report.
We ask University of Washington to consider releasing a Github similar to NY Times, which updates COVID-19 data ongoingly. We believe releasing open source data this way should become the standard (https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/).
We further plan to support the views of diverse folks through the Co-Caring Chat.
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Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of resolving our dilemmas and completing the #Co-Caring Dashboard with its powerful presentation of data that supports local #co-caring efforts.
What we learned
It is worth exploring how to include all voices in public health discussions — especially an issue like COVID-19 that affects a very wide group of people. The final team searched, as non-experts, for acceptable paths to visualize data projections in order to support local impact. We found that while people may not agree on an approach, there’s productive ways to share learnings from debates that can bring a fresh perspective and a great solution.
We’re proud to present the #Co-Caring Dashboard, which reflects our learning, includes diverse voices in the discussion, and has potential for positive and deep impact by connecting people to #co-care.
What's next for the #Co-Caring Dashboard
After working together, we hope to suppress COVID-19 spread by maintaining this dashboard to connect people and show the impact of our collective #co-caring efforts to flatten the curve.
Please contact Minda Aguhob for more information. minda@vytality.co
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