Alumni Teach New Ways to Tell Stories via Data.
“In public health, you’re so used to seeing these PowerPoints with the blue background and the same old pie charts,” says Jessica Malenfant (SPH’06), senior health informatics analyst in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. “Your eyes glaze over.”
Malenfant and fellow alumnus T. Scott Troppy (SPH’98), a surveillance epidemiologist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, are making a virtual return to SPH to teach a webinar on presenting data in richer and more compelling ways, Engage and Inspire Your Audience with Story Maps, on January 11.
The webinar is part of the Population Health Exchange (PHX)’s inaugural Winter Institute, which will run from January 8 to 12 with short, immersive programs open to professionals from across sectors and with all levels of public health knowledge. This year’s Winter Institute focuses on turning data into action, with program topics including intervention planning, data visualization, SAS software, and public health informatics.
Malenfant and Troppy’s webinar will be on using the ESRI Story Map. A virtual story map “takes a data set and visually transforms it into useful public health information that tells a story in a really meaningful, effective way,” Troppy says. “You can overlay your data with information about social vulnerability and demographic layers—what percentage own their home, what percentage uses public transportation—which allows you to present and tell your story in a more meaningful way.”
Malenfant’s work with Troppy began when she interned, and was later hired, at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health while finishing her MPH. Together they worked on the Massachusetts Virtual Epidemiologic Network (MAVEN), among other projects, before Malenfant moved on to Brigham and Women’s Hospital as a clinical informatics project manager, and then to the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
After working together on gathering health data, the two alumni say they are now increasingly collaborating on ways to better present that data.
Health fields, they say, lag behind other fields when it comes to adopting new data-presenting technologies. Malenfant says she wants to see her interns and potential hires—many new MPH graduates from SPH—already coming into the workforce with a greater range of these tools. She is currently co-teaching a half-semester course at SPH, PM804: Digital Disruptions of Health, with D. Keith McInness, research associate professor of health law, policy & management. They recently brought Troppy in to co-teach a unit on public health surveillance and informatics.
As members of the Alumni Leadership Council, both say they are excited about the continuing education efforts of PHX, and are excited to teach one of the Winter Institute offerings. “PHX offers such a variety of tools that you can learn about in quick, efficient ways,” Troppy says. “Things are changing every day, and it helps you keep your toolbox up to date.”
Registration is now open for the PHX Winter Institute, including the Engage and Inspire Your Audience with Story Maps webinar on January 11. The webinar is free, but PHX’s other offerings have a 25 percent discount for current university students, SPH alumni, BU faculty and staff, and residents of upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income countries.