An Expandable and Adaptable Web Platform for Supporting Public Health
Risk Response to Covid-19
Abstract
The scale and extent of the effects of COVID-19 on our lives is
unmatched by any other recent natural disaster. Effective management of
the spread and consequences of this pandemic can reduce the burden on
health and help in managing the different costs by relaxing
restrictions. Understanding this need, our interdisciplinary team of geo
and health scientists at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
(UNMC) developed a multi-layered interactive dashboard in March 2020.
The dashboard provides an automatically updating map of COVID case
numbers and their time series in Nebraska counties. Also, Nebraska’s
pandemic response leaders can see each hospital and its number of beds
and contact information, the location of dialysis centers, long term
care facilities, and pharmacies; the name of the emergency response
coordinator; and the number of electricity-dependent Medicare
beneficiaries in each county. The UNMC Dashboard, has helped the
emergency response and health departments of Nebraska. It has received
attention from local to international level. In addition to garnering
public recognition, the Dashboard established connections between our
team and stakeholders in our original climate tracking projects, as well
as with other groups with whom we had not previously collaborated. We
have established a close connection with Nebraska Medicine, one of the
top medical facilities in the region, and their demand forecasting team.
Also, we have developed new connections with out of state contacts in
health department, resulting into an expanded version of the dashboard.
Additionally, the dashboard demonstrated our capabilities and
strengthened our relationships with local health departments in
Nebraska. One of our primary projects relates to public health emergency
preparedness for extreme weather and climate events in Nebraska. The
success of that project depends on collaboration with different health
officials in the state, who are now more aware of our team and our
capability to provide practical solutions and tools. We suggest that
this system can adapt to different frameworks, such as the Emergency
Risk Framework (ERF) by World Health Organization (WHO). Our system
provides the foundation for the information sharing required by such
systems -therefore helping with communication and decision making.