Sunlight Labs

Together We Breathe is a tool for concerned individuals (parents, community activists, asthma sufferers) to view the state of asthma in their community and to compare their community with others. Better living with asthma requires a combination of managing asthma triggers - e.g., air pollution, exercise, tobacco smoke - and self-management. In response to this, Together We Breathe is a mashup of asthma, environmental, and socioeconomic data that provides a unique snapshot of the burden of asthma and asthma triggers in a given community.

This tool not only visualizes publicly-available data using interactive maps, but also through a specially designed dashboard interface that allows quick comparisons between counties and across multiple variables. In addition to comparative visualizations, the values of this tool are that: (1) it is centered around a problem - community asthma - rather than a dataset; (2) it brings together datasets that have not been combined before; and (3) it is based on an understanding that too much data can be a bad thing - the selection of a compact set of variables and data was guided by a need to make the tool accessible to communities.

Together We Breathe promotes information for action. We encourage users to utilize the information from this tool to help advocate for asthma sufferers in their communities and for communities everywhere to "take a breath of fresh air". Inspired by a personal connection to asthma, Together We Breathe was developed by a diverse team that formed for this competition, a team comprised of public health specialists, computer and information scientists, and designers.

This health data tool was specifically developed in response to the Design for America contest. It uses only publicly available data from the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency, and state level data agencies, including data highlighted by the HHS Community Health Data Initiative.

Our team is based in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Bay Area; Boston; and Madison, WI.