METHODS: The VDH Injury and Violence Epidemiologist convened a small group of stakeholders drawn from the agency Injury and Violence Prevention Program, local health department staff, and hospital-based injury prevention programs. Through structured meetings, survey work with a larger group of state-level injury prevention network members, and an iterative dashboard development process, the IVE used successive feedback to inform the final dashboard project. Stakeholder feedback also informed the process of revising VOIRS. All dashboard products were developed using Tableau 9.1. Data analysis to support and develop back-end datasets feeding the dashboards was conducted in SAS 9.3. Partnerships with informatics staff in the VDH Office of Information Management were further developed through this process to support final products.
RESULTS: Stakeholder involvement in the development of public reporting systems for injury and violence data led to successive improvements in VOIRS and supported the development of public data visualization projects. Building on dashboard work and resources developed for the agency Community Health Assessment project, work on an external injury and violence dashboard is ongoing and expected to be publicly available in Fall of 2016. Improvements to VOIRS developed through this process are expected to be rolled out throughout 2016, including a webinar for new users, a revised online dictionary of injury and violence terms, new query capacities within the system, and the retirement of features that were deemed unnecessary.
CONCLUSIONS: The stakeholder engagement process that drove the development of the injury and violence dashboard project ensured that data visualizations made available to the public complemented existing public injury and violence data resources and served public need. The process of designing dashboards for public consumption should involve stakeholder engagement and should include processes for ensuring that visualizations are readily understandable and address relevant issues. Public-facing injury and violence data visualization platforms have the ability to maximize stakeholder involvement in the work of state-level injury and violence prevention programs while contributing to public discussions of emerging injury and violence issues.