Health unit launches 'Windsor-Essex Health Status Indicator Dashboard'

Windsor-Essex residents can now monitor local health indicators in the community.

The local health unit has launched the 'Windsor-Essex Health Status Indicator (WE-HSI) Dashboard' on its website.

According to the website, the information will help the health unit understand how the community is doing and where the region can improve. 

There are nine indictors the health unit is currently monitoring such as mental health, substance use, immunizations and infectious diseases.

Manager of Epidemiology & Evaluation Ramsey D'Souza says they started working on the dashboards prior to the pandemic.

"When 2019 was coming to a close we were looking to explore some of these ideas internally," he continued. "We developed some examples of what we can look to present internally with some of the work we're doing but COVID-19 really ramped up the need to have timely information for planning and decision making."         

D'Souza says the pandemic ramped up the need to have timely information for planning and decision making.

"We wanted to continue that momentum going into other areas as well and that's really been the key driver for us was to see the success that we had with COVID-19 and the need for timely data and having that apply to other areas of public health," D'Souza said.         

He says there's been a greater need for up to date information.

"What the health unit has embarked on was using those principles that we applied during COVID with our COVID dashboards and our vaccination dashboards to other areas that are great importance of public health."