Visualizing and Analyzing Data from Health Center Grantee Progress Reports

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA’s) Bureau of Primary Health Care distributes supplemental grants to health centers for service delivery and capital improvements in areas such as COVID-19 response, HIV prevention, school-based health, oral health, and hypertension control. Grantees submit thousands of progress reports annually to report on award activities, which HRSA must then analyze to understand the outcomes and improve the effectiveness of its grants. 

To support HRSA, Mathematica employs human-centered design to build automated snapshots that visualize each grantee’s progress. For example, the snapshots show the characteristics of the grantees; their progress in using the funds and for which activities; indicators of the quality of data they submitted; and their barriers, successes, and lessons learned. These summary snapshots aggregate data from progress reports, award applications, and the Health Center Program Uniform Data System, which includes patients’ characteristics, service use, costs, and more. Mathematica co-creates the snapshots by meeting with HRSA program staff and subject matter experts to provide HRSA with a data-driven, user-informed grantee monitoring tool.

Developing the snapshots requires advanced analytics methods, such as natural language processing, to extract relevant data from grantees’ written responses to open-ended questions. We collaborate with end users to develop qualitative measures that extract from the response text information on activities pursued, barriers and successes faced, and lessons learned.  

Mathematica is also assessing HRSA’s supplemental funding efforts to investigate its questions of interest and offer recommendations in those areas to improve how the Bureau of Primary Health Care monitors and assists grantees. To date, we have completed reports covering four supplemental grants that helped health centers prevent, mitigate, and respond to COVID-19 and to enhance health care services and infrastructure, including improving and modernizing their Uniform Data System Plus reporting system. We reviewed the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s data sources, measures, and technical assistance provided to these grantees; identified opportunities for improvement; and recommended ways the Bureau of Primary Health Care could improve those areas to enhance the office’s ability to support program staff responsible for oversight and monitoring of future similar awards.