2014 Healthy Communities Achievement Award
The Health Council of South Florida was recognized as a runner-up at the 2014 Healthy Communities Achievement Award ceremony for their initiative to "hot spot" the neediest areas of the community by creating heat maps. The initiative informed the place-based funding initiatives of local funders.
Read the full submission below and visit Healthy Communities Achievement Award to learn more about the award.
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Abstract
Include a brief introductory sentence, information about your activities and your results.
Miami Matters heat maps have encouraged local funders to transition to place-based funding initiatives. The zip-code level maps target communities experiencing the worst outcomes and as a result, two of the heat map “hot spot” communities were awarded multi-year, multi-million dollar funding investments. In this, Miami Matters and the Health Council team have engendered a fresh spirit of cooperation and motivation to move the proverbial HCI needles in a positive direction for Miami-Dade County.
Background
Use this section to provide a brief introduction to your program to help us better understand your community, the population served, and the opportunity you chose to address.
Miami Matters was launched in May 2010. Supported locally by HCSF and built on the HCI platform, Miami Matters has successfully brought health and quality of life indicator information to thousands of viewers.
The community turns to Miami Matters for the only local-level information publicly available in a user-friendly format. Funders and interested community members find the heat maps of preventable hospitalizations and ED visits particularly useful. The HCSF and HCI work together to provide this analysis by using hospitalization data; age-adjusting the data to allow for an “apples-to-apples” comparison; and providing data visualization on a heat map of the County. The chronic disease maps create a compelling case for the neediest areas of the county as time after time the same communities appear as “hot spots.”
Goals and Objectives
In 500 words or less, tell us about your goals and objectives. How did you decide to address the need you identified? What goals did you set? What was your timeframe?
Goal 1. Provide reliable Miami-Dade County health outcomes data at the ZIP code level.
Obj. 1. Age-adjust the data to allow for an “apples-to-apples” comparison across ZIP codes;
Obj. 2. Post data and downloadable PDF maps to Miami Matters and disseminate a report of neighborhoods to community partners and funders.
Description of Activities
In more detail, describe the activities you conducted to meet your goals and objectives. Include specific information about how you created change in your community.
Better data informs key decision-makers and health care agencies on how to reduce overall healthcare costs and how to provide more coordinated/effective care. HCSF is the only agency publicly providing health outcomes data at the local level. These are posted annually at www.miamidadematters.org in the form of preventable hospitalizations and emergency room visits.
In addition, presentations made to political leaders, funders, DOH, educational institutions and faith-based organizations have garnered excellent participant feedback, thanking HCSF for making the data “come alive.”
Results/Impact
What results did you achieve? Did you meet your goals and objectives? How did you measure this?
Most recently, site visits have increased due to neighborhood-level investment efforts launched by local funders. These innovative efforts were directly influenced by the local level insight offered on Miami Matters. Funders report that they have used HCSF’s heat map report to re-route their funders tour and used the maps to pinpoint neighborhood targets for a multi-million dollar place-based funding initiative. This award opportunity generated a flurry of activity among the “hot spot” communities, resulting in over 50 neighborhood meetings to strategize on how to use the data to make the investment case for a particular area. In the coming months the Health Council will be working on a new project to provide specific data, training and additional support to communities.
What was creative or unique about your approach?
In the community, Health Council staff emphasize the importance of understanding the social determinants of health that contribute to the detrimental health outcomes of “hot spot” residents. By placing the chronic disease heat maps beside socioeconomic indicator maps, it is abundantly clear that the poorest, least educated and most unemployed areas are also the sickest.
Describe any partnerships that were formed or organizations you collaborated with.
Innovative healthy community partnerships between high-need areas and local funders underscore the importance of the publicly available, local-level data on Miami Matters. By supporting the annual preventable hospitalization and ER visit analysis and heat maps, the Health Council of South Florida and its local funding partners advance evidence-based planning and policy development for improved health planning. Funding institutions are now encouraging potential grantees to reference Miami Matters to support and enhance grant proposals. Such local level, direct health indicator data is not otherwise available and we are extremely proud to see the renewed motivation, commitment to change, and spirit of cooperation it has engendered in our region.
Which of the following portion(s) of your HCI product was used in your efforts?
PQI/PDI grouping/Age-adjustment Analysis