About

The Public Health Data Dashboard (PH³D) Project is a collaboration between Rutgers University and Florida State University. This interdisciplinary initiative focuses on understanding how public health data dashboards are designed, governed, and used, and how they can better support equitable, actionable decision-making. By bringing together stakeholders and exploring the landscape of research and practice, our team is working to generate evidence-based insights, tools, and best practices that strengthen data dashboard knowledge and infrastructures, improve transparency and trust, and ensure that dashboards serve the needs of both decision-makers and the public.

Project Aims

This project aims to advance theory, research, and practice regarding the future design, implementation, and evaluation of public health data dashboards by systematically mapping and analyzing the current landscape of national public health data dashboards in the U.S. Given that relevant knowledge is dispersed across disciplines and fields that are not in conversation with one another, and that valuable knowledge can be gained from analyzing current applications.

Research Questions
  • What is the current landscape of national public health data dashboards? Who creates them, for what purpose, with what data, and for whom? Do dashboard creators interact and collaborate?

  • What models, policies, rules, and standards are used to create national public health data dashboards, and do they influence creators’ decisions regarding which data are sourced and how data are linked, integrated, and updated?

  • What processes and/or frameworks are used for the development, implementation, and evaluation of national public health data dashboards? What are common metrics/indicators for assessing use and impact?

  • What design approaches, principles, and features are most frequently incorporated in national public health data dashboards? How may they be associated with the use of these tools?

  • What funding and operational models (including staffing structures) are used to develop and maintain national public health data dashboards? What are the most significant costs? What are some best practices, if any, for efficient use of resources?
Project Deliverables (Open Access)
  1. Findings of scoping review of the literature on public data dashboards and framework for evaluating public health data dashboards
  2. Methodology and instruments for mapping and analyzing national public health data dashboards
  3. List and key characteristics (e.g., creator, funder, data source, indicators/metrics, supported analyses, etc.) of national public health data dashboards in the U.S.

  4. Findings of mapping and analysis of the landscape of national public health data dashboards in the U.S.

  5. Findings of survey of national public health data dashboards’ creators.
Funding Source

Support for this research project is provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.