Unleashing the power of demographics data

Briana Preslar
Sales and Marketing Coordinator
(800)819-9785
Briana.Preslar@livestories.com
Unleashing the Power of
Demographics Data

Who am I?
- Attained two Bachelor's degrees from the University of Washington for
Medical Anthropology / Global Health + Evolutionary Biology
- We work a number of clients who are building content around big data sets
regularly
- Content Creator for our LiveStatistics Resource page
https://www.livestories.com/statistics
Data about your community at a National, State, County, and City level
Briana Preslar
Sales + Marketing Coordinator
(800) 819-9785
briana@livestories.com
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesResources Made For You

Today We Will:
● Learn to identify the data you need to answer your questions
● Quickly go over how to access the data from trusted sources
● Cover how to break the data down to work for you and how our
customers have done it
● Review different resources made available to you for quick and easy
data access

Handling changes that are occuring in your community,
often requires you understand how your community is
changing.
One way to identify how and where change is occuring,
is by asking the right questions and using data to help
answer them.
SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesWelcome Resources Made For YouWelcome

● Are you looking at the right population of people?
● What do you want to know about this group?
● What data sets can help you better understand this
group?
● What can you do to tell the best story possible?
Ask These Questions Before You Start:
SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesWelcome Resources Made For YouWelcome

Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUUnleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesAccess the Data
A Quick Review of -
Accessing the Data You Need
Resources Made For You

How to get the data:
1. Go to the relevant data source you need to access
2. Navigate their table builder or the equivalent to it and build the table you
need
- This will be determined by the indicators you want to look at
EX: Locale x sex, age, educational level, income, etc.
3. Download the table
4. Vizualize
5. Create the story you are trying to tell
We covered this process extensively in a previous webinars:
WONDERing About Your Community’s Health?
The ABC’s of the ACS
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccess the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesResources Made For YouAccess the Data

THE CDC Wonder BASICS
What is in the data?
● The datasets deal with most reportable
health related topics (cancer, heart disease,
etc).
● The most reliable data is represented in
mortality and natality counts.
● You can ﬁnd a list all of topics here, as well
as a designation of who hosts the data. IF
you need summaries of the data you can
ﬁnd that here.
NOTE: Not all of the topics here are hosted by WONDER, but
they are normalized by the CDC to be useable.
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUUnleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesAccess the Data Resources Made For YouAccess the Data

ASK THE CENSUS BUREAU
FactFinder:
● Use this to look
up your data
table, and to
verify exactly
what you are
looking at.
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUUnleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesAccess the Data Resources Made For YouAccess the Data

Let’s Get To It -
Unleashing the Power of
Demographics Data

Unleashing the Power
● Ensure you are looking at the right data sets and
indicators within them
● Be speciﬁc in the group you are investigating
● Be clear and precise in your communication and
wrap it in a story
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccess the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesResources Made For YouUnleashing the Power

● Ensure you are looking at the right data sets and
indicators within them.
This could be:
- A specific location (state, county, city, etc.)
Demographics Information by Locale → ACS
- A specific sub-group of community members within a specific locale
Housing/Income Information by Locale → ACS
- People experiencing a certain ailment or participating in a specific behavior (at any
level)
Death Data → CDC BRFSS
- In depth data collected on a more granular level and time period
Your own data → collected by your organization, state, or county/city
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A specific location (state, county, city, etc.)
Ex: I want to look at business establishments
in the United States.
A specific sub-group of community members within a
specific locale
Ex: I want to look educational attainment of people
in Washington
People experiencing a certain ailment or participating in a
specific behavior (at any level)
Ex: I want to look at heart disease deaths
in King County, Washington
● Ensure you looking at a specific group in a specific locale
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and ResourcesResources Made For YouUnleashing the Power

I want to look at heart
disease deaths in King
County, Washington

Things to consider:
● If you are
representing multiple
locales, include them
● When possible,
include benchmark to
other locales
I want to look at heart disease deaths in King County, Washington

I want to look at heart disease deaths in King County, Washington
Chart takeaways you should
write about:
- Washington has
generally better heart
health than the United
States average.
- King county, WA looks
to have healthier hearts
than the Washington
State average.
- *The why...

Be clear in your communication and wrap it in a story
Who is your audience?
- Your community members?
- Your stakeholders?
- Community prospects?
Ex: New businesses
Ex: New community members
This won’t affect how you work with the data,
but it will affect the way you tell the story.

“ A fact is 22 times more likely to be
remembered when it has been wrapped in a
story. ”
— Jerome Bruner

1. Provide relevant context to support the data and facts you are trying to
get across.
2. Include relevant images that help connect the data and facts to the story
you are trying to tell.
3. Look into using OTHER (less common) indicators dealing with
communities and the people within them.
4. Put the information in a format that people are not only familiar with,
but used to navigating and easy to ﬁnd.
5. Include any additional resources they have on the topic for easy
navigation.
● Be clear in your communication and wrap it in a story

Leading Indicators and Interesting Measures
● Community Vitality → Cantril's Ladder, ACS, BRFSS Data
- Emotional Support - Social Support - Civic Engagement
- Social Inclusiveness
● Health → BRFSS, ACS, and Local Data
- Age Expectancy - Median Age - Mental Health Ratings
- Physical Health Ratings - Child Statistics
● Housing + Income → ACS and Local Data
- Affordability - Homelessness Stats - Infrastructure Capacity
- Housing Conditions
● Economy → ACS and Local Data
- Avg. Income - Cost Burden

● Transportation → ACS Data
- Commute Times - Ways of Getting to Work - People Working at Home
● Environment / Infrastructure → National Environment Public Health Tracking
Network.
- Infrastructure - Access to Internet - Air Pollution
● Education → ACS and Nation’s Report Card
- Education Levels - Reading Proﬁciency in Schools
● Public Safety → CDC Wonder and FBI Crime Report Data
- Violent Deaths - Violent Crime Rates - Car Accident Data
● Business Environment → ACS Data
- New businesses - Distribution of Industries
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and Resources
Leading Indicators and Interesting Measures
Resources Made For YouUnleashing the Power

Bullhead City, AZ -
Economic Development
Report
● Population
Breakdown
● Housing in Bullhead
● Income and Poverty
Levels
● Business
Environment
● Transportation

Bullhead City, AZ - Economic Development Report

Healthier Together - Washington County, OR
Example of providing:
● Relevant images
● Context
● Links to more
information

The demographics
information is only
one click away.
Then they go above
and beyond to
investigate
additional
information about
the community.

WIN Measures
This robust report includes
many interesting indicators
and measures that aim to
speak to the overall health of
communities everywhere.

WIN Measures
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Do other things like:
● Calculate cost of Burden
● Evaluate less common indicators
of community health

Work on the data a little to get more information.
Cost of burden = %
Sum of all households where housing
costs more than 30% of the household
income
+
Sum of households with 0 or negative
income
Total number of
occupied housing units

Access other data sets with valuable information
1. Asks people to rate their
lives on a ladder where the
bottom in their worst
possible life (0) and the
top is their best possible
life (10).
2. The second question asks
them to rate where they
think they will be on the
ladder in ﬁve years.
A score of 7 or higher
will put someone in
the “thriving”
category
A score of 4 or below
will put someone in
the “suffering”
category
Cantril’s Ladder - This measures how someone feels about
their life. This can provide a very interesting indicator of overall
community health.

Examples of this visualized
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Finally -

LiveStories.com/statistics
Quickly lookup data tables
and BRFSS codes by
indicator and additional
information on the indicators
themselves
OR
to request data sets to
export for your own use
Welcome SEE IT AROUND YOUAccessing the Data Unleashing the Power Examples and Resources
Visit:

You will ﬁnd helpful
information about what data
table codes to use in order
to ﬁnd each of these data
sets.

On these pages we go over
what indicators to use and
what you need to know
about them.

Request the latest data on
topics concerning
communities everywhere,
and get it speciﬁcally for your
location

The ABC’s of the ACS - How to make the most of
the American Community Survey
● We go over how to navigate the ACS FactFinder Tool
● How to download the data you need
● We deﬁne the terminology they use within their data sets

WONDERing About Your Community’s Health?
● We go over how to access and download the data you need
● How to visualize the data you have just downloaded
● Where to ﬁnd help with understanding the codes they use to classify
types/categories of death data

Show Your Data Some Love
5 Data Visualization Mistakes to Avoid
● The rules of visualizing certain trend data
● We cover when to use and when not to use certain chart types
● We review the value different charts bring to your reports

Submit your thoughts!
- For more info email us at Info@livestories.com
- Submit your questions to us now using the chat
window!
Briana Preslar
Sales + Marketing Coordinator
(800)819-9785
briana@livestories.com

Resources for You
Links to Webinars:
ABC’s of the ACS
WONDERing About Your Community’s Health
Show Your Data Some Love
Links to Mentioned Data Sets:
- LiveStatistics
At the National, State, and County Levels
- ACS FactFinder Data Tool
- BRFSS Indicators Center
Briana Prelsar
Sales and Marketing Coordinator
(800) 819-9785
Links to Examples:
- Bullhead City, AZ
Economic Development Report
- Washington County, OR
Healthier Together Story Board
- WIN Measures
(Report on Your Community available
for download)

Unleashing the power of demographics data

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