Virginia Wellbeing Dashboard

Context

The Virginia Wellbeing Dashboard translates complex behavioral health data into accessible insights for policy and program planning. Built on anonymized insurance claims data from five million Virginians—the first time Virginia has studied behavioral health at this population scale—the Dashboard integrates clinical outcomes with social determinants to reveal how living conditions shape mental health and substance use patterns across communities.

Homepage visual explaining how social factors shape behavioral health

Launched in 2023 by the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in partnership with Virginia's Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS), the Dashboard addresses a core challenge: how do we make health data work for the people who need it most?

Problem

The accessibility gap

Virginia collected rich data on mental health, substance use disorders, and social determinants, but this information remained trapped in academic publications and technical reports. Policymakers, community health workers, and local organizers needed evidence to support systemic interventions but couldn't navigate epidemiological jargon or complex datasets.

Designing for everyone means designing for no one

The dashboard needed to serve both technical users (epidemiologists, policy analysts) and community stakeholders with varying data literacy. How do you maintain scientific rigor while achieving true accessibility?

Scale with consistency

Virginia has 133 localities and 40 regional service organizations, each requiring customized reports. Manual report generation was unsustainable; automated systems risked losing the contextual nuance that makes data meaningful.

Solution

User Research (May 2023 – 2024)

Co-conducted 6 remote qualitative usability tests via video calls with diverse Virginia stakeholders: community health advocates, local government staff, DBHDS administrators, and researchers. Tested information architecture, navigation patterns, data visualization comprehension, and language clarity.

Key insight: Users needed to understand both what the Dashboard could and couldn't do for their specific use cases. Different stakeholders had different needs—some wanted finer geographic detail, others needed longitudinal trends, many needed help interpreting what the numbers meant for decision-making. Rather than obscuring these limitations, transparently managing expectations and teaching users how the tool could help them became central to building trust and usability.

Content Strategy & UX Writing

This insight shaped a content strategy guided by three principles:

Dashboard design values from the About Us page

Examples:

• Replaced "age-adjusted mortality rates" with "deaths per 100,000 people, accounting for population age differences"

• Reframed "social determinants of health" as "identities and living conditions that shape wellbeing"

• Translated the Community Wellbeing Prediction Score (a weighted regression model integrating 22 social indicators) into "communities' relative likelihood of thriving," describing higher-scoring areas as having "more opportunities for people to thrive"

Information Architecture & Information Design

Designed layered disclosure system: headline insights for quick scanning, expandable sections for detailed exploration—allowing both technical users and community stakeholders to find their entry point.

Designed automated content systems to serve Virginia's 133 localities while maintaining accessibility and statistical literacy:

• Locality-specific reports that adapted tone and framing based on each community's characteristics and data availability—for example, emphasizing both rates and total numbers for areas with highest needs

• Chart descriptions that updated across different chart versions, providing detailed statistical context (e.g. chart type, trends, outliers, key data points, medians) to build statistical literacy while meeting screen reader requirements

Ensured additional accessibility compliance: keyboard navigation, high color contrast.

Collaborative Process

Worked within multidisciplinary team including Lead UX Designer (Lucy Hahn), Data Visualization Specialist (Tiffany France), Full Stack Developer (Marc Redmond), and Epidemiologist (Jong Hyung Lee). Participated in iterative design reviews integrating user feedback with public health expertise.

Results

• Significantly reduced manual report generation time through automation, freeing public health staff for analysis and community engagement

• 133 Virginia localities served with customized, accessible health data reports

• 40 regional service organizations supported with data for resource allocation decisions

• Accessibility compliance exceeded minimums—built for true usability, not just technical compliance

The Dashboard now serves Virginia's regional service organizations as they identify needs and allocate resources, informs state policy decisions through the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, and enables community organizations to understand local health disparities—making systemic factors visible and addressable for collective action.