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Abstract

Public health data dashboards have substantial potential to improve transparency, understanding, and decision-making at multiple levels, from individuals to public health practitioners and policymakers. However, creating effective dashboards presents many challenges. In this case-based tutorial on public health dashboard development, we share lessons learned from our experience developing data dashboards for the HEALing Communities Study (HCS), a National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded, community-engaged intervention to deploy evidence-based practices to reduce opioid overdose deaths in 67 communities across 4 states. We present key decision points dashboard teams must address, along with the major considerations and trade-offs that shaped our approach. First, we describe core considerations of the who, what, why, where, when, and how of data dashboard development. Second, we outline steps in data curation, including the identification of key metrics and potential data sources and developing processes to acquire the data. Third, we discuss practical aspects of developing data visualizations that can effectively communicate key messages to the end users of interest. Fourth, we describe the infrastructure considerations to host and publish data dashboards. And finally, we discuss maintenance and sustainability of the dashboard. While the material can be read sequentially as a step-by-step guide, we refer to this resource as a “playbook” because readers may engage with specific domains in a random-access fashion, that is, based on their specific needs and/or starting point rather than a fixed sequence. The information, supplemental materials, and resources will assist individuals and organizations seeking to build data dashboards by fostering context-sensitive evaluation of design and implementation choices to realize the promise of data-driven decision-making.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Notes/Citation Information

© Elwin Wu, Raymond Balise, Benjamin Katz, Daniel Harris, Matthew Bullard, Naleef Fareed, Marc Larochelle, Jennifer Villani. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (https://publichealth.jmir.org), 09.Apr.2026. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.2196/83157

Funding Information

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration through the NIH HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative under award numbers UM1DA049394, UM1DA049406, UM1DA049412, UM1DA049415, and UM1DA049417 (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04111939). Dr. Villani was substantially involved in UM1DA049394, UM1DA049406, UM1DA049412, UM1DA049415, and UM1DA049417, consistent with her role as a Scientific Officer.

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