Dr. Stephen Sills (Center for Housing and Community Studies) received new funding from the National League of Cities for the project “Technical Assistance in Geospatial Health and Housing Data for the City of Bloomington, Illinois – Economic and Community Development Department.”
CHCS will work with the City of Bloomington, the Healthy Housing Team, and other local stakeholders on the creation of an interactive map that shows the geospatial location of health outcomes, housing, and interventions as well as conduct statistical analysis on the correlations between health indicators and social determinants. CHCS will also work with the City and stakeholders to examine intervention strategies that would leverage existing community resources and identify potential new resources. Long term, the map and data will assist with other planning initiatives such as an update to the Community Health Needs Assessment, the City of Bloomington Consolidated Plan, and neighborhood level planning. We propose a comprehensive planning process that starts with a convening of stakeholders to determine 1) who the end-user of the data and mapping system will be, 2) what key data elements will need to be collected for the mapping system and baseline database, and 3) which entities will be responsible for long-term sustainability of the data and mapping system. This user-centered design is essential to producing a dashboard system that will be useful and sustainable well after the initial project period. Bloomington has identified a number of potential data sources but notes that these sources are not all accessible nor organized on the census tract or block group level. CHCS will assist the City of Bloomington and the Healthy Housing Team to index and compile existing data; identify, and acquire additional data as needed; as well as to geocode/aggregate any point level data. Finally, CHCS will produce an online Geographic Information System and Dashboard or Interactive map using ArcGIS Online. The system will be shared with the City of Bloomington to be updated and revised in order to refresh data and as future data sources are added.
