Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE)

Custom interactive data dashboards with Tableau

The Challenge

For years, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) published health data through static reports and spreadsheets on its website. While this approach made information technically available, it posed significant barriers to accessibility and usability. Public health professionals, researchers, and community members often struggled to locate relevant data, interpret complex tables, and draw actionable insights. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and cancer statistics contain rich, multidimensional data essential for evaluating health needs, identifying disparities, and informing policy decisions. However, without interactive tools, users could not easily explore trends across regions, demographics, and time. Recognizing these limitations, KDHE partnered with Avaap to develop a modern, user-friendly solution that could transform static data into dynamic visualizations—empowering stakeholders to better understand and act on the health challenges facing Kansas residents.

Key Highlights

The Solution

In collaboration with Avaap, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), launched two public interactive dashboards in the fall of 2024:

Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) Dashboard – This dashboard provides health information from a representative sample of Kansas adults. The survey is crucial for assessing health needs, detecting health problems, planning health programs, and tracking changes in health behaviors and diseases. The survey has been significant in informing health policy in Kansas since 1990.
Cancer Statistics Dashboard – This dashboard provides prevalence, incidence, and mortality rates across counties, public health regions, and demographic groups. This data calls attention to areas where public health efforts and outreach can focus, and they highlight meaningful disparities across geographies and subpopulation groups.

The Result

Historically, KDHE has made data available on the public website. However, the newly introduced dashboards enhance the ability to explore the data in a more accessible and interactive format. They provide user-friendly interfaces to allow greater visibility and insights. Some of the new key features include:

Interactive Data Visualization – Users can select various data categories from drop-down menus to view specific health metrics across different regions in Kansas. Data are also available for several more populated counties with sufficient data for county-level analysis.
Visual Cues for Interpretation – The maps highlight data with varying shades of blue, indicating the severity or prevalence of health issues.
Detailed Data Insights – The dashboards divide data into quartiles, offering a clear visual representation of health trends. This tool helps users quickly identify areas of concern and track changes over time.
Enhanced Accessibility – The dashboards were designed to make it easier for public health professionals, researchers, and community members to access and interpret BRFSS and Cancer data.

The Partnership

The dashboards are powered by a data and analytics engine called Tableau. The data sources are the most recent data from the BRFSS Survey, Kansas Cancer Registry and Kansas Vital Statistics. The dashboards available on the KDHE website have been deployed to the BRFSS and Cancer Prevention and Control pages.

Use the links below to view the dashboards: