Exploring COVID-19 within U.S. Congressional Districts

A new feature in the Atlas allows you to explore the history of COVID-19 from the beginning of the pandemic to today, within the context of U.S. Congressional Districts.

A view of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama with US Congressional Districts. This map shows confirmed cases per 100,000 using a box plot method. Box plots summarize data using quartiles, and highlight upper and lower outliers. Dark brown areas are high outliers of COVID cases (as compared to the entire country), whereas dark turquoise areas are low outliers.

Just in time for the election, users can now select a historical view of COVID cases (eg. choropleth map of confirmed cases per 100,000 persons) or watch emerging trends (eg. hotspot map of 7-day new confirmed cases per 100,000), and then click on the Congressional District overlay. Zoom to your area of interest, then click on the time slider to watch change over time

Statistical hotspot results of total confirmed cases per 100,000 persons, as of October 12, 2020 with Congressional District overlay enabled. “Coldspots” shown in a dark blue highlight counties of low COVID rates, neighbored by counties of low rates. Red “Hotspots” had high COVID rates, neighbored by high rates.

Because congressional district boundaries vary dramatically and may occur across multiple counties — or, like in Chicago, may have multiple districts within one county — the overlay method is a quick, effective way of viewing both datasets at once.

Click on the dataset an variable of interest, select map type, and then overlay US Congressional Districts.

To explore :

• Select the dataset and scale of interest, for ex. county-level data from USAFacts.
• Select the variable of interest, for ex. a 7-day average of new cases per 100,000 persons.
• Select map type: either a choropleth (thematic) map or statistical hotspots.
• Select US Congressional Districts as an overlay. Zoom into your area of interest!

You will note that reading individual districts is tricky when taking a wide view of the country. Various sized congressional districts, reflecting how populations are spread out across the country, can pose challenges at that scale for viewing.

We thus recommend zooming into your area of interest to inspect more closely. Alternatively, you can enter an address or place of interest in the search box.

A closer view of Wisconsin using a thematic map of 7-day new confirmed cases per 100,000 from October 12th, shown with Congressional Districts boundaries.

While the new feature in the Atlas enables you to view the district you’re in, it won’t provide details of your representatives or election specifics.

To find your local representative, look them up using the official .gov site or one of many related civic tech sites.

The US Covid Atlas is meant to serve as a complementary opensource tool to access information and generate insights during the pandemic.

Another feature to enable alongside US Congressional Districts will be additional county-level information. When a county is clicked, a dashboard on the right-hand side of the Atlas will provide over a dozen additional social, economic, and health indicators. Some of these, like access to health insurance or average length of life, can also be mapped as selected variables.

Overview by Marynia Kolak, health geographer, spatial epidemiologist at the University of Chicago & co-lead of the US Covid Atlas Project.