March 11, 2024 – HEALTHeLINK, the health information exchange (HIE) for Western New York, today announced the launch of its HEALTHeWNY Dashboard, the first-of-its-kind tool to improve interventions for public and community health.
“The launch of the HEALTHeWNY Dashboard is a significant next step in HEALTHeLINK’s commitment to improving the health and well-being of our community by using data to inform a variety of health-related decisions,” said Dan Porreca, HEALTHeLINK president and CEO. “Instead of anecdotal observations and conclusions, health care partners can utilize HEALTHeWNY to obtain real-time evidence and address where there are some of the greatest disparities, whether it’s a specific zip code, age, race, ethnicity or gender. With limited resources, being able to address a disparity at that granular of a level only benefits our overall health care system.”
The HEALTHeWNY Dashboard is interactive and allows users to explore data at a county and zip code level, providing a detailed picture of health in the Western New York region. Data can also be broken down by specific health outcomes, demographics, and more. The dashboard is updated regularly with the most recent de-identified data available, to ensure patient privacy. Users such as local health departments, community organizations, health care providers, and policy makers can access the accurate and timely information they need to make informed decisions about health and wellness in their local communities.
“Public health practitioners in New York State are fortunate to have easy access to county-level health data for community health improvement efforts, but as is often the case with these statewide datasets, there is a lag of two or more years,” said Breeanne Agett, MPH, public health consultant based in Chautauqua County. “With the data available to us in recent years, we have been able to identify issues and develop plans, but we have lacked easily accessible, recent data to inform process measures. The HEALTHeWNY Dashboard helps to fill the gap and will improve the ability of public health entities to track progress toward meeting chronic disease prevention goals.”
For example, by utilizing the HEALTHeWNY Dashboard a local health department could identify what towns in their county have the highest rate of diabetes. Rather than conducting programs throughout the entire county, staff could direct education efforts and resources within those identified communities where there is the most need to improve health quality and better achieve health equity.
The HEALTHeWNY is publicly accessible for community utilization and can be found at wnyhealthelink.com/resources/healthewny/.
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About HEALTHeLINK
HEALTHeLINK serves as a resource for broad health system transformation through secure data-informed decision making for individual patient care and to support community investments with a purpose of improving health, health care, and collaboration with local health care providers and those who are connected via the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) to improve health outcomes and health care delivery, control costs, increase access to care, and improve health equity in Western New York. HEALTHeLINK is also a founding member of Civitas Networks for Health, a national collaborative working to use health information exchange to improve health. Providers and patients can visit wnyhealthelink.com or @HEALTHeLINK on Facebook, X, or LinkedIn for more information.