Developing the first-of-its-kind Tobacco control index for ASH Canada

Background

Action on Smoking & Health (ASH Canada) is one of Canada’s leading tobacco control organizations. The organization’s primary activities include policy development, public education, mobilization and applied research. These activities have helped to shape numerous tobacco reduction policies and strategies. In 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC). This evidence-based treaty is aimed at reducing global tobacco use and its measures are estimated to have prevented 50 million deaths globally. Participating countries provide biannual reports of domestic tobacco control activities to the WHO. The data collected in these reports has not been deployed in a manner that can be readily utilized by governments, NGOs, media organizations, and academics.

Challenge

The purpose of this project is to develop the first-of-its-kind online global tobacco control index to actively monitor, measure and influence tobacco control progress and performance among all participating nations. The index will align with the articles of the FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) to assist with the monitoring and implementation of this global public health treaty. It is imperative to present the information in a user-friendly and interactive way to effectively communicate the data and allow stakeholders to benefit from the index when creating their own reports.

Approach

Creating a centralized solution to present tobacco control data to various audience members from different types of organizations requires a dynamic and open-minded approach. Visualization best practices must be carefully applied while maintaining readability, ease-of-access, and a “wow!” factor that grabs the reader’s attention. Keyrus and ASH Canada worked hand-in-hand to prototype striking designs that met all the aforementioned criteria and participated in roundtable sessions where feedback was gathered from stakeholders. Keyrus dedicated two full-time members to the project: Harim Jung as a Sr. Tableau Consultant, a 2-time Tableau Public Featured Author (Viz of the Day) with strong design skills; and Vlad Katkov as a Managing Consultant, with over 5 years of experience in the BI and analytics space and technical project management.

Key results

Benefits

Working on a topic of global interest, Keyrus Canada was able to use a Tableau tool to process and combine data allowing organizations to access a 2.0 vision of their data.

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