The Congressional District Health Dashboard’s Highlights Reel: 5 Milestones in 2024
As 2024 is coming to a close, let’s look back on what we’ve done at the Dashboard and reflect on highlights and milestones that have made this year remarkable.
Check out our top five milestones from this past year!
1. Three new metrics The Dashboard strives to continually add novel, relevant, and actionable public health-related measures to the site. This year we added three new metrics: Medicaid Enrollment, Chronic Absenteeism, and Air Pollution – Ozone. These three additions span the domains of Clinical Care, Social and Economic Factors, and Physical Environment – extending the Dashboard’s broad coverage of drivers of health.
2. Five new website features This year, we released numerous updates to our site to support our users’ data journeys.
We updated our ‘District Snapshots’ feature to provide users the ability to see state-level data at-a-glance. Users can now explore an overview of the metrics and demographic information for all states and districts using our Health Snapshots page.
We added the Compare Districts feature which allows users to compare all 37 metrics across every district and/or state in the nation.
We made it easier for users to quickly print ‘Health Snapshots’ and download images of metric maps and scalebars.
The Congressional District Health Dashboard is now cross-linked to our sister site, the City Health Dashboard. This feature can be helpful for those looking to learn about metric values for cities within their district. To explore the cities in a particular congressional district, navigate to the ‘District Facts’ tab under ‘Health Snapshots’.
The Dashboard provides demographic details for 16 of our metrics, including breakdowns by race/ethnicity, age, and sex. In 2024, we added sensemaking statements to ‘Metrics by Demographics’, to help users interpret the demographic data available for these metrics.
3. Expanded resources to support your data journey Here at the Dashboard, we aim to provide resources to make it easy for policymakers and advocates to use our data. In 2024, we hosted a series of Virtual Office Hours, launched the Dashboard Roadmap animated video series, and shared a perspective piece on data for public servants.
4. Connecting with policymakers and policy fellows As part of our 2024 policymaker engagement campaign we launched our first large-scale outreach to Congress, in which we sent district-tailored materials to staff members from all 435 Congressional offices, and Washington, D.C.’s congressional office. And, to continue our effort to share the Dashboard with policy experts, our team presented to the current cohort of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellows in Washington, D.C.
5. Growth in reach, users, and team Throughout the year we celebrated national reach, expanded our user base, and strengthened our team. We have reached over 14,000 users this year from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. And, our team has grown with 3 new members—Avalon Aragon, Hedy Ludwig, and Aminata Kaba.
And with that, 2024 comes to a close. We look forward to 2025 and are excited for all that’s to come. Next year users can expect to see new metrics, updates to district boundaries and metric estimates for the 119th Congress, additional content, and more. Stay in the know for all updates by signing up for our newsletter and connecting with us on X and LinkedIn.
Happy holidays from the Congressional District Health Dashboard – See you in 2025!
