Share pandemic insights with a customizable Community Report
Build a custom report to export, print, and share findings
What’s the easiest way to print or share data and insights from the US Covid Atlas?
That’s a question we’ve heard a lot from users of the US Covid Atlas over the past two years since we launched in March 2020. We’ve gotten requests from many folks that they wished there was a “low-tech” way of sharing data or maps from the Atlas — one that’s not just sending the website link, or taking a screenshot. We’re excited to share a new feature to help. The Atlas’ customizable Community Reports feature allows users to build a printable report that can be highly customized, as well as exported, shared, and printed.
There are multiple uses for sharing data and insights with US Covid Atlas Community Reports:
- Advocacy with local health or public authorities
- Extracting insights for print or media journalism
- Sharing information with colleagues or neighbors
- Getting regular, regional updates for business or school contexts
- Linking findings in low-tech, printer-friendly ways
The Atlas has grown with a participatory design approach, and this Community Report feature is no different. To get a sneak preview and generate your own report, click here and follow the steps in the diagram and the detailed instructions below. Then, we’d like to hear from you. How would you use this type of report? What kind of stakeholders can you envision needing or using this report? Is there anything about the process of generating a report that seems confusing or counter-intuitive? Send us your feedback and we’ll get back to you with the latest updates (and our deep appreciation).
Create your own Community Report
- Getting Started. To get started, visit bit.ly/atlas-focus-group (that’s the sneak-preview development page) and navigate to the map page.
On the left side, the icon dock contains a variety of tool options. Click the “Report Builder” button to begin.
2. Choose a template. The Atlas report builder provides 4 default templates to get you started:
- My County’s Stats, the most detailed data available on the Atlas
- A National Snapshot, for an overview of the whole nation
- My Region’s Snapshot, a broader regional view of how your county and its neighbors are doing
- My Neighboring Counties’ Stats, a view of how your county and its immediate bordering neighbors are doing
Choose a template that best fits your needs. You can customize the area of interest and pages in the next steps. If none of these sound like what you are looking for, you can click “Something else (blank)” to start with a blank page to build on.
3a. Select Your Community. Some templates, like “My county’s stats” need a county or zip code to get started. Search for your community, and the template will populate with data relevant to you.
3b. Customize your report. Next, click through to customize your report even further, if desired, by selecting different data variables, charts, or map views. Each template will populate with some helpful data about your community and the template you’ve chosen. However, if you want additional context, data, or information, you can explore the additional report items on the left hand side of the panel. Currently, we provide 4 available types of report items:
- Maps: visual geospatial data
- Tables: summary data on different topics
- Descriptions: text-based plain language information
- Charts: Line charts to show historic context and scatter charts to illustrate relationships of different variables
Click on the gear icon in the top left corner of the item to select a new variable or visualization.
You can add more pages to your report by click the ‘+’ button below the first page.
4. Save and Export. Click “Next” to go on to options to Save and Export your report:
- Save your report. Finally, click Finish on the bottom right side of the page. That will save your report and allow you to revisit it on your current device. Come back to this page at any time on your current device and select your report name from the “Previous Report” drop-down menu.
- Export your report. Currently you can export your report pages as JPGs or PDF pages. (We’ll soon add the ability to export as a single PDF.)
Use your report! Share your report with colleagues, neighbors, or others.
How did your report turn out? We appreciate your feedback as we refine this new feature. Send us a message with your thoughts on any or all of the following questions:
- How would you use this type of report?
- Is there anything about the process of generating a report that seems confusing or counter-intuitive?
- Do the templates shown in the demo meet most of your use cases? If not, what are some others we might want to implement?
As always, you can find and explore the latest data at USCovidAtlas.org/map.
