What's New?! Introducing The Policy Map Widget

At the Area Health Education Center of Western Washington, we value the creativity and innovation of our local communities in responding to health care needs. The Policy Map Widget is an interactive mapping tool that highlights their stories as well as the data in the Primary Care Needs Assessment and other projects of AHECWW.

The Area Health Education Center of Western Washington hope that the Policy Map will help to facilitate a dialogue between students, providers, and healthcare institutions on health status indicators and how health workforce shortages and innovation impact the communities we serve.  In turn, these conversations will shape AHECWW program design, strengthen our new and existing partnerships, and support our work in lessening health disparities and eliminating gaps in the diversity in the health workforce.

The Policy Map was developed by our diverse team at AHECWW who bring to this work their experience in  healthcare, community outreach, software development, and education.

Photo from NCI

What You'll Find in This Article:

~ What's On the Map?

• Community Health Centers and Lookalikes
  • What Are They?
  • What Do They Do?
  • Workforce Training
• Rural Underserved Opportunities Program Participants (R/UOP)

~ How To Read the Map

• Default Datasets Shown on The Map
• Overlays
• Boundaries

~ How To Navigate the Map

~ The Policy Map: Area Health Education Centers By Boundary

What's On the Map?

Community Health Centers and Lookalikes

The map currently highlights Community Health Centers (CHC) and Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alikes.

What Are They?

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) describes Health Centers as “community-based and patient-directed organizations that deliver comprehensive, culturally competent, high-quality primary health care services to the nation’s most vulnerable individuals and families, including people experiencing homelessness, agricultural workers, residents of public housing, and veterans.

What Do They Do?

Health centers integrate access to pharmacy, mental health, substance use disorder, and oral health services in areas where economic, geographic, or cultural barriers limit access to affordable health care. By emphasizing coordinated care management of patients with multiple health care needs and the use of key quality improvement practices, including health information technology, health centers reduce health disparities.” 

Workforce Training

Many health centers help train the healthcare workforce through Health Professions Education and Training Programs. Health centers also support and directly participate in pathway programs (See our: Northwest Health Career Path Project) to support the development of health professionals from awareness building to leadership development. They are partner with a wide variety of academic institutions, in this example, we highlight the Rural Underserved Opportunities Program.

 Read more from the Policy Map Glossary

Rural Underserved Opportunities Programs Participants

The Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (R/UOP) is a four-week, elective immersion experience in community medicine for students between their first and second years of medical school. During their four-week rotation, students live in rural or urban underserved communities throughout Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho (WWAMI ). They work side-by-side with local physicians providing health care to underserved populations.

Administered by the Office of Rural Programs, RUOP is a collaborative effort of the UW School of Medicine, WWAMI campuses and the Area Health Education Centers. It is governed by a Steering Committee of major participants. The program has strong support from the many volunteer physician preceptors and the communities they serve. It is also supported by the Washington and Idaho Academies of Family Physicians.

Read more: University of Washington School of Medicine

We look forward to highlighting stories from our programs, staff and students with Policy Map.

How To Read The Map

Default Datasets Shown

• Community Health Centers(CHC) points are indicated with a green square
• Rural Underserved Opportunities Participant (R/UOP) placement is indicated with an orange circle
• Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Areas are indicated with bold, blue lines around WA state.

Datasets in the "New Map" drop down labeled with a location icon will add points to the map

Overlays on the map are labeled by color; the legend on the right will indicate which color is associated with which dataset.

• Datasets in the "New Map" drop down labeled with a 3D plane icon will add overlays to the map
  • Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) types indicates each HPSA type with a different color
  • Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA) indicate primary care HPSA, non-HPSA and lacking datasets by colors purple, grey, and blue respectively
  • Staffing and staffing shortages as well as served and underserved populations datasets show either the percentage or population number from lowest to highest via lighter to darker shades of purple on map with light grey and white indicating insufficient data and the lowest population number reported and the darkest shade of purple indicating the highest percentage or population number reported
  • Medically Underserved Areas (MUA) indicate each MUA area and population and area and populationwith government exception with different colors

Boundaries

• Boundaries to visualize the data with currently offer counties by bold, black lines through the map
• and the AHEC areas indicated with blue lines around WA state.

The Legend on the right of the map will indicate what is currently being shown on the map

• The Dataset shown will be written in bold. black type
• You may remove a dataset by clicking the "x" to the right of the name of the dataset
• You may expand the information and sources cited about the dataset shown by clicking the double arrow (<<) to the right of the name of the dataset
  • Expanded overlay information will show you the type of the data shown (drop down), the year Policy Map got the data (drop down) and you may view the criteria for the data by selecting the information icon, i, underneath the name of the dataset and above the link of the cited source
  • Expanded point information will give you the option to search the address of a specific point of the indicated dataset and check off which populations and percentages you'd like shown on the map by color

How To Navigate The Map

• Use the scrolling action on your mouse or touch-pad to zoom in and out or use the up (+) and down (-) arrows in the bottom left of the Policy Map widget
• Decide which data you'd like to see by 1) Clicking the "X" on the legend on the right to delete a dataset 2) Selecting "New Map" in the upper left to add a dataset
• Narrow down your search-by-location in Washington with the "Location" drop down
• Search a specific address with the using the search bar
• Print out the map of the current datasets shown by selecting the print icon in the bottom left of the Policy Map widget

Pssst....Open the map in another window with the arrow in the upper right corner of the Policy Map widget to get a better look!

Area Health Education Center Areas by Boundary

Hover over the boundaries to see which AHEC Area you're viewing