Nebraska’s User-Friendly Dashboards Make it Easy to Explore Public Health Data…and Top Baby Names!
Success StoriesNebraska’s public health data once lived in separate systems, making it difficult and time-consuming to answer important questions from communities, partners, and policymakers. In this video, Felicia Quintana-Zinn, Associate Director of Health Data at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, explains how PHIG funding helped the state bring siloed data together into a centralized warehouse and translate it into public-facing dashboards.
These dashboards support local health departments, hospitals, and community organizations in understanding health trends, while also empowering everyday Nebraskans to explore data themselves. Users can learn about community health risks, like smoking and hypertension, as well as positive indicators such as vegetable consumption and healthy birth outcomes. One of the most popular dashboards highlights the state’s top baby names!
By making data more accessible, timely, and user-friendly, Nebraska is identifying health challenges earlier, learning from communities where outcomes are improving, and encouraging greater engagement with public health data.
Video Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
What was the situation in Nebraska?
We had all of our different data sets, and our different systems were really siloed. They were separated from each other. The data was very difficult to get to. So when our epidemiologists or data scientists needed to address a particular question or get data out to the public, they would have to go to each one of these systems or each one of the different data sets to pull it. And it really took a whole lot of time pulling each one of those data sets, formatting that information to something that’s digestible and usable for any analysis that we needed to answer general questions from the public or from local health departments or our grant funders. Anytime we had to do that, it took a lot of time, it took a lot of energy, and required a very special skillset.
How have you made it easier to organize and access data?
So with PHIG, we’re able to have folks that could focus on taking that data that was in all those separate systems and gathering it all together in a warehouse. And the easiest way to think of it is a Costco. It’s not a live and physical Costco, but a warehouse like that where it’s digital, where you’re able to pull down data. It’s all in nice, sorted aisles where you’re able to easily access what you have there, you’re able to see what’s in there, and where you can easily go from row to row and pull down what you need. That also makes it easier for us to be able to put that data together and use it in different combinations than we ever were before.
How are health professionals using this data?
Once the data was in the warehouse and in a good state, we’re able to build a face on that – and that’s in the form of dashboards, public-facing dashboards. We also have some internal ones, but public-facing dashboards have really been a key win for us. Local health departments are able to gather in their communities, “what does smoking look like? What does alcohol use look like? What is vegetable consumption, or what are some of their nutritional habits? Are they seeing an increase in folks that are having hypertension or other health outcomes that we really want to get out in front of? We want to know so we can prevent health issues from happening for people, or even turning those things around so that they’re living healthier and better lives.
Who else is using this data?
One of my favorite use cases and groups that are using the data are just our everyday Nebraskans. An example of one of the dashboards that we have is our birth dashboard. It’s annual data that we have out there: it includes just general demographics and where we have births, but also, are they healthy births? Are there things going on with those births, and what’s happening to the moms? But the other fun thing is we have the top 10 baby names, both male and female, and just overall top 10 baby names. And that has been so widely accepted. It’s something that’s super fun for people. It gets them invested in the data, and it gets them interested in it, so then they start diving in. But it’s just a fun way to show from 2005 until 2024: what are the top 10 baby names? You can see how the name Ashley has grown or shrunk in popularity over that same time period. And you can even go down to a local jurisdiction of five counties or seven counties and be able to see here on this side of the state, “Oliver” is number one, but on this side of the state, “William” is number one, something like that. So it’s just a fun little thing that you’re able to do and see with our data.
Why is this work so important?
Having data that’s easily accessible, that is newer or more recent and isn’t very old, is really helpful for local health departments in particular, but also hospitals or community centers to really identify what is a problem in their community, and what health outcomes or what issues they’re seeing in their community. But one of my favorite things is also: what are the protective things that are happening in these communities? You’re able to see if trends are moving in a really positive direction with a health outcome. They can ask that question, what are you doing differently? How are you doing this? And really going against what we’re seeing in other communities. And that helps them identify easy-to-change factors, things that they can promote within their communities, to really just help people protect themselves and protect their communities.
Why is PHIG funding so critical?
Having this funding is one of those things that has made a huge difference for our state. Having the ability to use this funding to fill in the gaps or to address items that we have not been able to address before has been incredibly helpful, and it’s really helped Nebraskans have better health outcomes, live better lives, and get to enjoy that time.