Issues and Initiatives

Healthcare

This section has data from the University of Wisconsin County Health data base.

It also has information about the Affordable Care Act.

Demographics

Statistical Data showing local population characteristics


Safety

Crime and arrests statistics broken down by county 

Economy

Economic Indicators


Transportation

We have two transportation working groups.  One is related to health and Rabbit Transit.

The other is based at the Greater Susquehanna United Way and relates to transportation problems faced by clients of local social service agencies.

Rural Homelessness

Heather Feldhaus and colleagues at Bloomsburg University have done path breaking work documenting the extent of rural homelessness.

We partner with the Columbia/Montour Housing annd Homeless Task Force as well as the Homelessness Task Force of the Lycoming County United Way.


Floodplain Issue

Residents of historic river towns have seen flood insurance rates sky rocket.  We provide links to the Lewisburg Neighborhoods Corporation, the Borough of Lewisburg, and the Lycoming County Planning Department so Platform users to get information and look at flood maps.
 

The Consortium

In August 2016 a meeting was held at Bucknell University, inviting people to participate in forming the Central Pennsylvania Data Consortium. 

Here are organizations that had members at that meeting:

Bucknell University

Bloomsburg University

Geisinger Medical Center

CSO Inc. (the Community Action Agency for Northumberland and Columbia Counties)

Greater Susquehanna Valley United Way

Union-Snyder Community Action Agency

Lycoming County Library System

North Central Library District

Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health

Small Data

The Community Platform is a partnership.  It includes social service organizations, health care organizations, and universities.  We had a meeting of this "consortium" in August 2016 to get organized.  We will have more such meetings in the future. Let us know if you want to be part of the consorium.

Our goal is to provide local-level data for different communities and for different issues in Central Pennsylvania.  We have a number of projects to develop and present data that we collect from local agencies and communities on important issues.  Right now these include projects on local transportation, rural homelessness, flood plain problems in river towns, addiction and drug abuse, food need and access, and health care.  You will find buttons related to most of these topics on our home page and clicking on the buttons will take you to data and information on the topic.

We call this information "SMALL DATA".  Collecting it is an ongoing process, however, so adding material will be slow.  Your comments and suggestions about how to improve the design and the contents of this Platform Web Site will help us a lot.

IF YOU HAVE SUGGESTIONS, email Carl Milofsky at [email protected]

While our goal is to develop and present local data, this Platform also presents the data we can find from BIG DATA sources like the census or national health information providers.  We want to make easiliy available data on the region related to different social problems or policy areas.  Our most current data presents many variables related to health, organized by county.  This material comes from the County Health Rankings provided by the University of Wisconsin.  You also can find crime and safety data that we will aim to update (now we have data from 2011), data on the location of nonprofit organizations by community, and data from the U.S. Census.  Much of our data is assembled and maintained by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., which is a repository for the American Community Survey as well as for a national database on nonprofit organizations.

We partner with a national organization, The Civic Leadership Project, Inc. that helps communities to build these platforms.  The mission of the Civic Leadership Project, Inc. (CLP) is to improve the capacity of communities, and especially their nonprofit organizations, to address the social and economic challenges they face.  More information is available on our website at http://civicLeadershipProject.org.  We appreciate the technical and moral support we receive from Rob Dana and Tom Pollak.

Funding for this project is provided by the libraries at Bucknell Univerity and Bloomsburg University.  Prof. Carl Milofsky of Bucknell and Prof. Heather Feldhaus of Bloomsburg University are the faculty lead people.

Although platform home page may look sparse, this website contains LOTS of information.  Play with it, try it out, see if you think it's useful, and communicate!

Here is how to use it.

  • Select a category.  A dialog box comes up:
  • Pick one or more variables
  • Pick one or more counties
  • A figure graphing the variables by county will come up.
    • We think the health graphing system works best
    • The graphing system for other variables is different, very neat, and a bit complex.  We're working on that.
  • Select Maps and Data; a map of the region comes up
  • One version of the map gives the locations of all nonprofits when you select a community
  • You also can choose a variable and get a color coded map of that variable by census tract