Abstract 237: An Analytic Approach to and Creation of a Data Visualization Platform for National Cardiovascular Surveillance Data

Abstract

Background: Data visualization (DV) is a creative method to depict data and convey the underlying meaning of analytical results. Effective and interactive DV includes integrating, unifying, and standardizing data from different sources, allowing users to directly modify the style and outcome of the results to create visual access of big data in simple ingestible pieces. Such freedom to users brings substantial enhancements in productivity and practicality of complex surveillance data. Well-designed interactive DV also increases value gained from data and analytics. The American Heart Association’s (AHA) Center for Heath Metrics and Evaluation (CHME) has developed resources and tools for DV of surveillance data. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the processes of data analyses and visualizations of national surveillance data. Methods: This study introduces the different surveillance data, describes the concept, analytic approaches, and demonstrates the visualization platforms. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 1999 - 2016 and Compressed Mortality data from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) WONDER, which included mortality by 15 underlying causes of cardiovascular diseases using ICD-10 from 1999 to 2017, were used to apply DV methods and tools for programming and creating interactive dashboards depicting trends in key cardiovascular health indices. Data were extracted, cleaned, and merged using SAS 9.4. Final estimates were calculated using SUDAAN 11 for weighting, imputing, and analyzing. Tableau 18.2 was used to share an interactive visualization of the analyzed data. Results: The CHME DV resources offer a variety of options to help parse and understand the significance of key health indicator data by placing it in a visual context. Using the NHANES and CDC Wonder datasets we developed interactive dashboards and a visualization platform depicting trends over time in cardiovascular metrics such as AHA’s Life’s Simple 7 indices of Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar, Cholesterol, Physical Activity, Diet, Body Weight, and Smoking. Trends in cardiovascular disease mortality in the United States were also developed. A visualization platform has been imbedded into the AHA CHME website for a wide variety of stakeholders, such as consumers and researchers, to view dashboards and customize products based on their specific needs. Conclusion: Patterns, trends, and associations that may otherwise go undetected or overlooked can be clearly exposed and communicated with an effective DV approach. DV tools comprise an array of resources from simple infographics to interactive dashboards. More interactive visualizations using other data sources, innovative methodologies and tools are needed and being developed by the CHME to present data more interactively enabling users to further understand and leverage data and trends.