BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Digital Public Health
This article is part of the Research TopicArtificial Intelligence in Public Health: Advancing Multidisciplinary Applications for Population HealthView all articles
Usability and Usefulness of U.S. Federal and State Public Health Data Dashboards: Implications for Improving Data Access and Use
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, United States
- 2Florida State University School of Information, Tallahassee, United States
- 3School of Information and Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
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Introduction: dashboards that afford timely access to credible, relevant, and actionable data can significantly improve public health decision-making at all levels. As dashboards becomes more ubiquitous, it is imperative to proactively consider how they may be optimally designed to be usable and useful to users. Methods: a cluster probability sample of U.S. federal and state public health dashboards (N=210) was utilized to describe and compare common design elements and data characteristics of dashboards. A standardized valid and reliable instrument was used to extract data for assessing dashboards’ usability and usefulness. Results: dashboards are primarily designed for epidemiological surveillance and assessing disparities. Both federal and state dashboards rely heavily on data collected by federal agencies but many state dashboards also draw on local data. Vulnerable subpopulations are underrepresented in data used in dashboards. Federal dashboards score higher than state dashboards on usability but are comparable in usefulness. About one-third of state dashboards are hosted on third-party platforms and are prone to access disruptions. Conclusions: Usability and usefulness of public health dashboards can be significantly enhanced by streamlining and enhancing users’ experience and incorporating additional customization and analytical affordances. A uniform set of best-practices and standards for optimizing dashboard design and implementation does not yet exist as research on this topic is lagging. Policy implications: Additional federal and state investments are needed to build and maintain a robust infrastructure for developing, improving, and sustaining public health dashboards and incentivize rigorous, theory grounded research to optimize usability and usefulness of dashboards.
Keywords: Data dashboards, Public Health, actionability, usability, Usefulness
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yanovitzky, Stahlman and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Itzhak Yanovitzky, itzhak@rutgers.edu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.