The Bowen Center for Health Workforce Research & Policy needed a more timely and automated means of providing reliable information about Indiana’s health workforce to help stakeholders answer fundamental questions about the distribution and relative supply and demand of the workforce. It is easier to understand these place-based questions when they are viewed geographically.
The State of Indiana funded a project to address this need. The Polis Center enhanced The Bowen Center’s health workforce data resources and data visualization efforts by developing an online portal that provides interactive mapping, a map gallery, data download, and streamlines map production. This portal helps Bowen identify opportunities to provide more immediate and cost effective access to spatially-enabled health workforce information.
The Bowen Center for Health Workforce Research & Policy at the IU School of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine, is engaged 
in research to inform health policy, improve health care delivery and promote population health. A large portion of Bowen Center’s current research focuses on the health workforce and the influence of various health care delivery models on access to care.
The Polis Center, in partnership with the Bowen Center for Health Workforce Research & Policy and with IU School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics, developed an online information sharing and mapping platform for Bowen, the Bowen Health Workforce Information Portal. The portal allows users the flexibility of accessing their information offsite and readily discover, map, and share health workforce data, including data about Indiana’s workforce supply and distribution, shortages, and education pipeline. These processes and tools enable Bowen staff to take the primary role in developing the map content to be presented within their portal.
Polis has subsequently developed a Report Generator tool for the Bowen Portal. The Report Generation feature allows users to create customized one-page reports about Indiana’s health workforce.
To learn more, contact Karen Comer.
