5 Innovative Ways SAVI is Supporting Public Health

I’m pleased to introduce the health edition of SAVI Online, the second issue of our digital magazine. It features a few of the many ways SAVI is helping improve health in Indianapolis.

1. SAVI helps nonprofit be more strategic in health initiatives.

For example, SAVI is helping Nurse Family Partnership pinpoint communities with unmet needs in which to target its program for at-risk mothers and infants.  SAVI’s mapping capability allows NFP to visualize their data and link it with other factors such as housing conditions and crime to identify other environmental risks.

Click the image below to access the interactive map.

Comparing Enrolled Population with Target Population

2. The NEW SAVI Advanced tool guides decision making and public health research.

SAVI Advanced is a powerful data visualization and analysis tool.  Its “brushing and linking” capability allows you to integrate, analyze, and visualize multiple datasets simultaneously to understand patterns and trends across geography and time.

Click the image below to access the interactive map.  

For example,

• Health researchers can identify spatial patterns and relationships, detect outliers, and formulate more useful hypotheses before conducting in-depth statistical analysis.
• Nonprofits can quickly identify geographic areas of unmet need, assess their service area, and prioritize community initiatives.

3. The NEW SAVI Indices tool helps analyze disparities.

Understanding socio-economic disparities across the region is important for understanding community health. This tool allows you to explore several indices online or to download for use in your own data analysis.

4. SAVI improves local health assessment quality.

SAVI’s data and analytical tools can support community health assessments.  Hospitals, local health departments, and community-based organizations can improve their process with these value resources.

The data can inform discussions with stakeholders to identify health priorities, develop better action plans, and target improvement efforts.

Learn about the Indiana Partnership for Healthy Communities in this issue of SAVI Online.

5. Partnering for better data to improve public health

Indianapolis is leading the way to mapping electronic medical records with socio-economic data to understand community health, disparities, and social risk.  The Polis Center, the Regenstrief Institute, IU Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, and the Marion County Health Department are partnering and using innovative methods to overcome data limitations and challenges to provide access to neighborhood-level health conditions.

To read these stories and more, check out our new edition of the SAVI Online Magazine featuring HEALTH:

To talk to someone about how SAVI can support your health initiative, contact my colleague, Karen Comer, Director of Health Geoinformatics at The Polis Center.