Consumer Health Portal: An Informatics Tool for Translation and Visualization of Complex, Evidence-Based Population Health Data for Cancer Prevention and Control

This presentation will describe the development and implementation of the National Cancer Institute's Consumer Health Portal (CHP), a web site addressing the Federal Government's mandate to increase public access to high value data (data.gov). Designed to present complex, evidence-based population health data primarily for consumers, but also applicable to public health planners, population scientists, and policy makers, CHP provides a single point of access to data, analytic, and visualization tools for cancer prevention and control. This portal enables users to explore how they and their community may compare with state and national trends in risk factors for cancer and related behaviors including tobacco use, physical activity, nutrition, and cancer screening. Data for these comparisons are drawn from publicly available public health datasets such as BRFSS, HINTS, NHIS, and SEER, linked to other regional and national data (e.g., cigarette tax, health policy, and other sociodemographic data). By integrating these data within an interactive geospatial interface, location-specific information on the built environment (e.g., parks and trails for physical activity, farmers markets,…) and related public health resources (e.g., smoking quit-lines, screening clinics) can help users locate personally relevant resources. In addition to describing the challenges of creating an interface for consumers that can provide actionable information from complex statistical data, the presentation will include a live demonstration of CHPs features including the utilization of crowd-sourcing to provide feedback and ratings on location- and domain-specific resources.