We are excited to share our new data visualization tools that help illustrate the state of Black maternal and infant health in the St. Louis region.
The goals of this project were to:
- Create accessible and user-friendly maternal and infant health data tools,
- Help community members interact with data in order to make improvements in the St. Louis region, and
- Change the narrative from, “a person’s individual behaviors cause adverse birth outcomes” to “the systems that a pregnant person interact with were built on white supremacist ideals and therefore affect an individual’s birth experience.”
To accomplish these goals, we began by hosting a series of five community data sessions in the summer of 2021. Each community data session provided space for community members to help tell the story of a specific Black maternal and infant health issue. The topics covered in these sessions were: infant & maternal mortality, clinical care, social determinants of health, coordinated quality care, and policy & advocacy.
From there, Generate Health staff and interns analyzed and transformed information from these sessions into three data pieces – a series of mini dashboards, a story map, and a collection of infographics. We then checked in with the community data session attendees to make sure we had accurately captured the information they shared with us and to provide an opportunity for feedback on initial drafts of the data tools.
We have spent the months since this check-in fine-tuning each of the tools and getting them ready to go live. Please take some time to explore the new Data and Causes pages on the FLOURISH website and let us know what you think! (Note: infographics are dispersed throughout the Data page and are linked next to their corresponding dashboards).
For any feedback or questions you may have, please email Elizabeth Ward at eward@generatehealthstl.org.
