The University of Montana announced on April 17 the launch of the Montana Healthy Communities Dashboard, an interactive online map that centralizes statewide health, environmental, and socioeconomic data. The dashboard aims to help researchers, policymakers, and health officials more easily access and analyze information for projects related to public health or climate.
The new tool addresses longstanding challenges in finding comprehensive data about Montana’s communities. Previously, researchers had to gather information from multiple sources or directly contact the University’s School of Public and Community Health. The dashboard brings together various datasets into a single location so users can explore connections between environmental exposures like wildfire smoke days and social factors such as income or housing.
Ava Orr, a research scientist at the university, said: “We started it because we had so much data, and we wanted to have it in a place that anyone – community members, researchers, local health officers or whoever wanted access to the data – could look at it in a visual way.”
Erin Landguth directs UM’s Data and Modeling Core at the Center for Population Health Research. She said: “The Montana Healthy Communities Dashboard is an open-access, interactive web platform designed to break down data silos. It brings together environmental exposures like air quality and wildfire smoke, health outcomes like asthma and premature mortality, and socioeconomic resources like income and housing stock – all onto a single, localized map.”
One feature of the dashboard is its visualization of the Adaptive Capacity Index (ACI), which measures how well communities can recover from events such as natural disasters or economic disruptions by analyzing variables across demographics; housing; language; education; and socioeconomics. Cindy Leary, statistician on the project team said: “We want to be able to understand how vulnerable different communities are, and then list potential interventions to help those different communities.”
According to Landguth: “The April 14 launch is not the finish line; it’s the starting line… Now that the architecture is in place there are endless avenues for where this can go.” The project involved collaboration with community stakeholders including Missoula Public Health as well as support from Missoula Invest Health grants.
According to the official website, University of Montana operates within higher education as a public research university emphasizing academic excellence with hands-on education in both virtual settings—offering online tours—and through traditional campus experiences. The university accommodates more than 11,000 students via undergraduate through professional degree programs offered across its colleges.