Florida Data Science for Social Good:
A partnership between UNF and local non-profits
Florida Data Science for Social
Good [FL-DSSG] blends data science and technology design to solve important
social problems.
SOLVING "WICKED" PROBLEMS
Five UNF interns worked throughout the summer of 2017 to
help solve a “wicked” problem for 3 separate community partners: the Mayo
Clinic, Changing Homelessness, and Yoga 4 Change. Each partner was interested
in helping the community address health disparities. A “wicked” problem is a
vexing, persistent social or cultural issue that is complex in nature,
interconnected with other problems, and requires many people working together
to affect change. For the Mayo Clinic, the interns were tasked with helping to
develop a process to decide which neighborhoods to serve with focused health
resources. Data analysis included
creating neighborhood profiles of health outcomes, community assets,
demographic factors, and environmental factors for their Rx Wellness Program. The
students assisted Changing Homelessness by generating profiles of individuals
experiencing chronic homelessness to identify effective interventions to
achieve functional zero (more homeless being housed than households becoming
homeless) on a monthly basis. The
Yoga 4 Change interns analyzed the impacts of the yoga curriculum to determine
whether it helped individuals overcome stress.
COMMITMENTS ACROSS CAMPUS AND THE CITY
What is especially remarkable about this partnership is
the rich collaboration among faculty from 5 different departments and leadership
from 7 different Jacksonville agencies. Dr. Karthikeyan Umapathy (School of
Computing) and Dr. Dan Richard (Department of Psychology) were the Program
Directors. The Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida funded
the project. Students received mentorship from within UNF and from the
business community. Faculty from the School
of Computing, the Departments of Public Health, Mathematics and Statistics, and
Political Science and Public Administration mentored students as they worked with the data. Two businesses—the Jacksonville
Jaguars and EverBank provided industry “Sherpas.” In addition the Advisory Board, including
members from NLP Logix, Fidelity Investments in Florida the Jacksonville Jaguars, provided
direction to the overall project.
The differences
among the clients—The Mayo Clinic, Changing Homelessness, and Yoga 4 Change—in
themselves reveal a feature of “wicked” problems: health disparities are
connected with other problems. The depth of the commitment—participants from 10
professional perspectives highlights the final characteristic of a
"wicked" problem: they require many people working together to affect
change.
DATA IS EXCITING
Over 100 people attended “The
Big Reveal”—the results of the students’ work—at the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida on August
7, 2017 at 5:30 pm. Dr. Umapathy introduced the audience to the process: 1]
identify a nonprofit with a wicked problem; 2] gather data and formulate a
plan; 3] analyze the data; 4] improve decision-making process for the nonprofit
client. With the support of industry
mentors, called “Sherpa’s” because of the challenge of the work, psychology
majors Evan Copello, Rachel Carpenter and Gregory Rousis collaborated with Computing
majors Hinal Pandya and Jason Smith.
Rena Coughlin, the CEO of the Nonprofit Center of Northeast Florida, who had
advance notice of what the students’ work would show told the crowd, “Some
things we will hear today are way bigger than I anticipated. We need to tell this story.”
RESULTS
- The Homelessness team worked with data from the
Homeless Management Information System to identify the most vulnerable
populations. They developed a Dignity Index, which measures Safety, Respect,
Control, and Meaningful Daily Activity; this data seems essential in solving
homelessness.
- The Mayo team drilled down
in their data and found different health problems—diabetes, heart disease, and
stroke—were not found across all marginal areas. Each was clustered in three different
low-income Jacksonville neighborhoods.
- The Yoga team, while working with blood pressure data from four
populations (those incarcerated or in re-entry, those with substance abuse
problems, Veterans, and vulnerable youth) found that at the end of the yoga curriculum, individuals in the Hypertension Stage 2 category had moved to either Hypertension Stage 1 or Ideal BP, and the number of people in the Ideal BP range increased from 55 to 117, as indicated in the chart on the right.
“YOU HAVE BLOWN MY MIND.”
What was the impact on the three
clients? Yoga 4 Change CEO Kathryn
Thomas watched the students present their findings and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh:
it works! We started it because we knew it worked, but to see this impact gives
us hope. It's hard to find donor support. This is huge for our next steps: we
will make drastic changes in how we approach donors. I want to thank you
because you have blown my mind.”
Ann Marie Knight, of the Mayo,
said to her, “We need to talk.” Perhaps another partnership is blooming. Ms. Knight turned to the students and said,
“You have created a tool we can use across the region and I thank you for that.
We will use it for our future good; we can see where to focus” on specific
neighborhoods. This tool will be made accessible to public in near future. It can be
accessed here.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING
One of the students, in
thinking back at the start of the internship said, “I didn't know I had the
mental capacity to do this large of a project.” He said, “this project is
genius –using data to solve real-world problems.” Another student said, she
“loved the opportunity to work with problems that were so important.” And a third commented it was “the perfect way
for me to give back.”
“SOCIAL TRUSTEES OF KNOWLEDGE”
Dan Richard, one of the
professors who created Florida Data for Social Good, told the audience at the
conclusion of the Big Reveal that those involved are “social trustees of
knowledge. “We have an obligation as a public university to give back our
knowledge." Provost Earle Traynam affirms Dr. Richard's point saying, "I have always been impressed by the quality of work that our students accomplish, especially under the direction of Karthik and Dan. It is such a great combination of student learning, community engagement and improving our community."
For more information about the FL-DSSG program, please visit: http://dssg.unf.edu/
