As part of the Northeast Florida Regional Council's 2022 First Coast Well Being Index, Smart North Florida analyzed a series of indicators related to Healthcare quality of life for the Northeast Florida Region.

The North East Florida  Regional Council (NEFRC) is dedicated to collaborating, analyzing, and developing North Florida in meaningful, equitable modern ways. The regional council spans seven Florida counties — Nassau, Duval, St Johns, Clay, Baker, Putnam, and Flagler.

Powered by local, state, and federal dollars, the NEFRC partnered with Urban SDK and Smart North Florida to understand the well-being of North Florida. 

UF students, through a partnership with Smart North Florida, were tasked with analyzing the well-being of North Florida in terms of health care access and utilization. They called this project the First Coast Well Being Index - Healthcare. 

This process required a large amount of data collection.

Smart North Florida Students worked to understand the data sources that were available to them. They also researched census metrics that might indicate health and wellness in the seven counties.

Students determined that population, healthcare enrollment, last annual checkup, and hospital locations were important indicators of the region’s health status.

From there, the indicators were visualized on Urban SDK's GIS Studio. 

Students mapped the population using red, circular symbology, where the deeper color red represented larger the population in the area.

On Top of the population data, Smart North Florida students were able to add information about healthcare enrollment. This was visualized using shades of blue. The deeper blue points indicate higher enrollment counts.

This data and visualization can enable a regional council to understand the demographics of North Florida. From there they can compare that to the location of hospitals in the region.

Enrolling people in healthcare, and having attainable hospitals, are all indicators that can likely be attributed to a healthier population.

‍About Smart North Florida

Smart North Florida (SNFL) started as an outgrowth of the North Florida Transportation Planning Organization (NFTPO) Intelligent Transportation Systems program for Clay, Duval, Nassau and St. Johns counties. Their mission is to harness the power of regional collaboration, coordinated data, and smart technologies to improve North Florida’s economic competitiveness, sustainability and quality of life.

As such, Smart North Florida focuses resource investment in three areas — regional collaboration, data coordination, and smart technology — ensuring that investments are strategically deployed to improve the lives of all citizens in their region. Through integrating these three key values, SNFL efforts result in better policy making, economic competitiveness, opportunity, transparency, and sustainability for all who call North Florida home. 

Throughout 2022, SNFL has partnered with other regional organizations to put their mission to work. Utilizing the power of Urban SDK, and the young minds of University of Florida Association of Information Systems graduate students, a regional collaboration of modern thinkers have taken its course. The students have made headway in creating a smarter, data-driven region through four projects.

About Urban SDK

A global leader in mobility analytics and data visualization, Urban SDK is the only enterprise data analytics platform that equips professionals with the urban planning data needed to make efficient, data-driven planning decisions.

We provide organizations with clean data pipelines, automated performance reporting, and an on-demand repository of data that can be accessed and visualized in our GIS mapping Studio. Urban SDK customers trust in and use our platform to build safer, more efficient, equitable, and sustainable infrastructure.

Learn more about how Urban SDK can help your organization make informed decisions using critical data. Contact our team here.