211 Project Update 1
Written by Priscilla Maryanski, Fernanda Moreno, and Katherine Wei
The 211 project is a project from the Coronavirus Visualization Team which seeks to deliver facts about average people: their needs, requests, and services they ask for from data sourced from United Way locations across each state. Currently, we are partnered with Groundbreakers to develop a web app in the next week or so, but we first wanted to reach out to mutual aid groups about the map that has already been completed to get their interest and feedback.
In the meantime, one of our team members, Priscilla Maryanski, created visualizations about 211 Requests in the state of Alabama during COVID-19. Her visualizations only included counties, months, and variables that were completely filled out, meaning some regions of Alabama are not present in the visualizations because the data had some gaps. In the first tab (“Content of requests to 211 Alabama”), the section titled “Requests for Assistance: Finances vs. Mental Health (Mar 2020 — Apr 2020)” shows that in the months of March and April of 2020, financial help requests increased greatly, gambling hotlines decreased as casinos closed, and mental health hotlines only slightly increased. Another notable point is when looking at “Safety-related Requests (March 2020-April 2020)”, shelter requests spike from March to April.
In the next tab (“Who is requesting and how? + call trail”), we can see that Birmingham is the city that requests the most, spiking in requests especially in April. The most common way that Alabama residents contact 211 is via phone and most people calling are regular Alabama residents looking for a referral number/hotline extension. Lastly, in “Call Tracking/Follow-Ups” it can be seen that people are just as likely to hang up as they are to follow up, call-wise.
For our next steps, we are currently drafting a proposal for the 211 project to be restructured into an umbrella for sub-projects, such as food security, mental health, and education, based on the literature review we had previously created. Essentially, the project will be divided so that there is still a Groundbreakers branch and a United Way 211 branch. Members who want a lower commitment or may be busy with other projects in addition to this one can continue working on tasks assigned by Groundbreakers and producing data visualizations, while more active members who are interested in a higher commitment will be moved to one of the new sub-projects.
