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The team at the New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) heard about the California Women's Well-being Index from our clients at the California Budget and Policy Center and knew they needed a similar interactive experience for their new State of Opportunity Index, a multifaceted statewide look and breakdown by all New Jersey counties on how residents are doing in their communities. With the most recent data available, the tool highlights the depth of disparities that exist across the state between communities. The Index will serve as an educational tool for the public and will inform advocates and legislators on the distinct and intersectional areas of health and well-being in the Garden State — and where targeted policy solutions are necessary.
The application provides easy access to statewide views of issues ranging from Police Use of Force to the average debt of public college graduates. Where the data is available, the tool provides statewide breakdowns by race/ethnicity, while a full county view presents all metrics for an individual county.
Data about college debt presented a special challenge here, since it is per campus and not per county. For that, we created an alternative map view, symbolizing points for each college campus, but retaining the county boundaries for a consistent experience moving between county-based and campus-based metrics.
The application uses the D3 JavaScript library for visualization, driven by a CSV for easy updates. Since the visualization runs entirely in the browser, with no special server dependencies, we were able to deploy it directly inside NJPP's newly designed Wordpress website, minimizing hosting costs and external dependencies.
Focus: Economic Development, Public Health, Social Justice/Equity
Services: Interactive Solutions, Applications Development, Web Mapping
Project Years: 2020, 2021