The Pursuit of Open Data and Healthy Communities
A deeper dive into the tool beamdata is building with Housing Authority City of Pittsburgh (HACP)
In our previous blog, we showcased beamdata and HACP’s brainstorming process to determine how data could be meaningfully visualized to better serve its residents, staff, and policymakers. We defined the final goal as creating a map to describe HACP-managed communities and each neighborhood’s relationship to its surrounding amenities, including healthcare, grocery stories, and bus stops.
Visualizing Healthier Communities
We jumped right into exploring open data. There’s an immense amount of information available in public Census datasets. However, the data is often too complex to use unless presented in ways that are easy to understand and actionable. We prioritized four datasets - Port Authority stops and routes, hospital locations, and grocery stores - to provide HACP residents with information they need to better understand their neighborhoods. Additionally, we included various indicators to provide a deeper dive on City of Pittsburgh data trends, which are organized in four broad categories: Demographic, Education, Economic, and Housing.
Grocery Store Access
When communities have access to healthy and affordable grocery stores, they are less likely to be forced to settle for high-calorie, low-nutritional value foods. Visualizing access to grocery stores in the City of Pittsburgh relative to HACP communities can help uncover unique food deserts. For example, as community development projects expand, are certain neighborhoods at risk of becoming food deserts? Mapping grocery store locations, and access to them, allows residents and policymakers to advocate for supermarkets or other sustainable food sources in underserved areas.
Public Transit Routes and Jobs
We also considered the importance of assessing if HACP sites such as Allegheny Dwellings, Homewood North, and Carrick Regency are located near equitable transit access. Public transportation often determines access to jobs and provides lower-income households with multiple employment opportunities. (Not only is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center the largest healthcare provider in Pennsylvania, but it’s also the largest employer in the state.) As a result, we were motivated to visualize bus routes to community assets such as hospitals and grocery stores, which are often located in areas with higher employment opportunities.
Equitable Healthcare Access
Housing quality and affordability directly effect health outcomes as do the physical characteristics of a neighborhood. Equitable access to healthcare means a patient’s ability to receive the right care at the right time and in the right place. A visual representation of hospital locations and ease of accessibility relative to HACP communities can reveal critical policy conversations about health outcomes and social determinants of health among low-income populations. Using publicly available data, we mapped access to hospitals from each of the 15 HACP managed housing communities, while also mapping the necessary bus stops and routes to reach the hospital.
Align Neighborhood Needs with Broader Policymaking
Healthy neighborhoods are the building blocks for strong cities. Data visualizations maps have the potential to engage residents in community-building and allow City agencies to tell a wholesome narrative of their work in neighborhoods. The ability to examine access to basic needs at the neighborhood-level can provide a granular understanding that is often lost in larger policymaking processes. This community-driven process elevates resident voices and creates pathways for further resident engagement using civic tech such as the mapping tool beamdata built for the HACP.
PGH Lab brings local entrepreneurs to beta test products and services in local government for 3–4 months. beamdata is part of PGH Lab’s fifth cohort. For more information about beamdata, visit its website.
Bhavini Patel (@bhavinipatel_)
CEO/Co-founder @beamdata
