As big data evolves, data visualizations can help turn the most convoluted facts and figures into clear stories, aiding further research efforts and promoting awareness around important issues.
For public health issues, specifically, data viz helps viewers and researchers alike digest medical information, track trends and outbreaks of diseases, and -- ultimately -- get closer to much-needed cures.
From the Ebola outbreak to global nutrition, we've rounded up seven recent data visualizations surrounding health and medicine below.
1. Ebola outbreak in West Africa
The Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) has created this up-to-date data visualization on the Ebola outbreak using information from several sources, including the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response and the World Health Organization. The information is broken down by country and district, and includes the total numbers of treatment centers, people receiving food assistance and response plan coverage.
Explore the interactive visualization here.
2. Life expectancy and probability of death
This project from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) illustrates how life expectancy and probability of death changed between 1990 and 2013 in 188 countries.
Explore which health issues caused changes in life expectancy by country, as well as the probability of death by age group, location, sex and year. Click here to see the interactive data visualization in action.
3. Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations' blueprint to tackle a number of global problems by a target date of 2015, included several health-related issues. This graphic, also created by the IHME, includes extensive data on child mortality, maternal mortality, the spread of HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Click here to see the full interactive.
HIVContinuum is an interactive map from AIDSVu, a project based at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. It shows new HIV diagnoses, late HIV diagnoses, linkage and engagement to HIV care, and more.
Users can look at city-specific data for Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and also filter by sex, race and ethnicity, and age.
5. Vaccine-preventable outbreaks
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As the measles outbreak linked to Disneyland began to spread in January 2015, a heated debate resurged surrounding the importance of vaccinations.
The Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations created this data visualization, which plots global outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella and other preventable diseases.
To see the larger version, click here.
6. Overweight and obesity patterns
The IHME released this interactive graphic in May 2014, highlighting global overweight and obesity prevalence in adults between 1980 and 2013. The data comes from a variety of surveys, reports and published studies.
Users can filter data by body mass index (BMI), age (20 years old and above), sex and location. See the full interactive visualization here.
7. Malnutrition and other public health problems
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The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released its first-ever annual Global Nutrition Report, a comprehensive analysis on the state of the world's nutrition, in November 2014. This data visualization uses information from the report, illustrating several types of widespread malnutrition around the world.
