Kansas City, Missouri – Kansas City residents now have a new way to see what communicable diseases are doing in their community, without waiting for a separate report or public briefing.
The Kansas City Health Department has launched the KCHD Communicable Disease Dashboard, a public tool that puts local case counts, trends and changing disease activity into one place and makes the information available to anyone.
The dashboard was developed jointly by the Health Department’s Office of Population Health Science and Division of Communicable Disease and Prevention. It can be accessed through the Health Department’s Office of Data Dissemination webpage.
Users can review reported case counts for communicable diseases and conditions in Kansas City, compare activity over different periods and follow how local trends change over time. The system covers diseases and conditions that must be reported to the Kansas City Health Department under local ordinance.
Health officials said the goal is not only to publish numbers, but to make public health information easier for residents, media organizations and community partners to understand and use.
“Public health data should be accessible to the people it is meant to serve,” said Dr. Alex Francisco, PhD, Chief Science Officer and manager of the Office of Population Health Science.
Francisco said the dashboard was built to make local disease trends easier to understand and follow over time. By presenting reported cases in a consistent public format, residents can see the same information the department uses while monitoring communicable disease activity across Kansas City.
The data will not remain static. The department plans to update the dashboard every Wednesday with case counts covering the previous Sunday through Saturday. Officials cautioned that individual totals can change as reports are updated and investigations are completed.
Even with those revisions, the department says the dashboard provides a more consistent way to track what is happening locally while also supporting its own disease monitoring, planning and response work.
Health Director Dr. Marvia Jones, MPH, PhD, said access to reliable information is especially important when residents are trying to understand the health conditions around them.
“At a time like this, residents want to know the status of their community’s health, and they want to know that they can trust what is presented to them,” Jones said. “I’m proud that we hold the community’s trust and that we can give them timely, accurate information.”
Questions about the dashboard or its data can be sent to [email protected].
