Community Vulnerability Index

Community Insight and Impact

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Data driven assessment of community needs across multiple axes; currently focused on COVID-19 but will be useful for other pandemics or disasters.

Health Economic Development
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This project is completed

Project scope (as of July 23, 2020, 12:09 a.m.)

Project goal(s)

We are looking for someone to help expand our dataset and improve our vulnerability index models. An individual volunteer would not have to work on all the below goals and we can accommodate multiple contributors.

  1. Incorporate additional data as recommended by the Lit Review team: This includes identifying reliable and open-source data sources that contain the requested information, cleaning, refining location information, and merging with the central dataset.
  2. Updating existing models: Refining our current linear vulnerability index models in line with Lit Review recommendations
  3. Exploring advanced ML based models Define targets for supervised models and train models to possibly improve accuracy of vulnerability indices. Use unsupervised models to better understand community similarities
  4. Longitudinal impact studies Replicate the vulnerability indices for extended time periods, look for major shifts in specific areas and correlate them with real events.
Data

Our current dataset draws from 10 different validated, open-source datasets from the CDC, FCC, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Johns-Hopkins University, and others. It contains socio-economic, demographic, health, and infrastructure information about every US county. We currently have over 50 variables and 8 constructed vulnerability indices.

Analysis Needed

Exploring advanced ML- based or statistical models Define targets for supervised models and train models to possibly improve accuracy of vulnerability indices. Use unsupervised models to better understand community similarities

Validation Methodology

Longitudinal impact studies Replicate the vulnerability indices for extended time periods, look for major shifts in specific areas and correlate them with real events. Other validation studies to understand the usability and accuracy of our models.

Implementation

The updated data and metrics will be incorporated into our dashboard which is available free of charge to non-profits, health systems, and individual community members. We are currently developing partnerships with key non-profits and analytics organizations to understand how they can best use this tool. We use a phase structure to organize project work and are currently wrapping up Phase 2 which focuses on finalizing our three key metrics (COVID-19 case severity, economic harm, and mobile health). Phase 3 will begin August 1 and will focus on improving the other 5 metrics and transitioning to more advanced analyses.

Scope version notes