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Winner Announced in Local Children’s Data Developer Challenge

PALO ALTO, CA – The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and Health 2.0 today announced the winner of the Local Children’s Data Developer Challenge, a nationwide contest for designers and programmers to develop interesting summaries of data, in order to raise the visibility of key children’s health issues.

Team Big Yellow Star won for its interactive tool, Mapping Health, a web-based, interactive data visualization focused on children’s health data in California.

Launched in January, the challenge was sponsored by the foundation and its website, kidsdata.org, as part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge. Kidsdata.org is home to more than 400 indicators on the health and well being of children across all California communities. The foundation asked participants to use data from its website to create a compelling summary that would draw attention to key problems affecting the health and well being of children, with the goal of promoting action from policymakers, advocates and other stakeholders. Teams were asked to use their creativity in making data about children engaging and easy to understand in any format they chose: a mobile or web application, visualization or game.

The winning application by Team Big Yellow Star allows users to explore different health indicators by state, county and race/ethnicity, with the goal of revealing racial disparities and areas of improvement. The site consists of four informational sections: state level data, state demographics, county level concerns and race/ethnicity and location.

“Making data about children engaging is a vital ingredient to raising visibility about issues affecting their health and well being,” said Andy Krackov, assistant vice president for Programs & Partnerships at the foundation. “Big Yellow Star’s submission met our goal of presenting data in compelling ways. We appreciate their submission, as well as the work from other developers across the country who submitted entries to our challenge.”