Classroom Materials

In two years of health care policy graduate school in Pennsylvania, I didn’t come across PHC4 or its data until my career advisor found their job posting. Since then, I’ve made efforts to bring PHC4’s data to academic audiences. The resources I’ve created are all publicly available and range in their intended audience from K-12 students to graduate students to mid-career physicians.

Accredited Courses

• Data Literacy CME Module

  This is a 3-part, 90-minute learning module that is accredited with CME when taking through the PA Medical Society’s learning management system.

  The course covers the basics of understanding, searching for, and evaluating data. Then, it challenges the learner to ask questions of and interpret data visualizations. Finally, the course teaches a few tips on communicating data and offers a decision support tool, called the Details of Delivery, for learners to take with them.

  Access the course content for free here.

K-12 Classroom Activities

• Slow Reveal Graphs

  Slow reveal graph activities show learners a data visualization where the contextual information, like axes titles or data labels, has been removed and gets added in slowly over the course of the activity. By removing contextual information from the visualization presented at the end of each exercise and asking students to interpret the information as it is provided, students engage in problem solving, gain confidence, and grow their computational thinking skills. As a result, students engage more deeply with the content of graphs and other visual representations of data.

  You can find this activity here.

Government Cases

• A Research Request from the Legislature

  This case seeks to serve two purposes at PHC4. By writing up a case describing how the study of non-compete agreements was assigned to us, PHC4 can generate engagement from students and educators and open the door to innovative ideas or solutions to support the actual study. This case is technical and involves reading data documentation and thinking strategically about collection processes.

  You can find this case here.

• A 5-Year Strategic Plan

  This case takes the 5-year strategic plan developed by PHC4’s council members and challenges learners to propose programs to accomplish the Communications & Education goals. It requires learners to consider stakeholders and audiences, to communicate data strategically, and to evaluate operations and execution.

  You can find this case here.