Overview:
This project creates an interactive, county-level choropleth map demonstrating the density and specialty distribution of Nurse Practitioners (NPs) across the state of Georgia. Developed for the Georgia Nursing Workforce Center at Emory University's Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, this tool aims to provide clear data visualization to support workforce projections and research.
The primary deliverable is a user-friendly, publicly available map that enables researchers and policymakers to visually identify areas of high or low NP saturation across the state, broken down by specialty. The map serves as a vital tool for understanding NP resource allocation and identifying potential geographical gaps in the nursing workforce.
This interactive map has been built for analyzing NP density and specialties:
Interactive County-Level Mapping: The map displays density shading across all 159 Georgia counties, providing immediate insight into the distribution of the NP workforce.
Specialty Filtering: Users can select any single NP specialty (e.g., Adult/Gero Acute Care NP, Psych/Mental Health NP) to immediately visualize its unique distribution across the state.
Geographical Identification: The density shading directly identifies geographical areas (counties) that may be underserved or oversupplied with NPs in a selected specialty, fulfilling the objective of identifying space in Georgia's NP workforce.
De-identified and User-Friendly: The map displays only aggregate, county-level data, ensuring the privacy of individual NPs.
Zoom Functionality: Selecting a specific county from the filter automatically zooms the map to that county, focusing the visualization for detailed analysis.
Key Data Variables Used:
Variable Description
NPI National Provider Identification number.
Address/County Address fields (City, ZIP) were processed to map NPs to their practicing county (COUNTYFP10).
NP_Type_Final The core variable used for specialty-based filtering.
County Mapping: The visualization relies on combining the provider dataset with the Georgia County GeoJSON boundaries. ZIP codes from the provider data were used to assign each NP to a specific county, allowing for accurate, county-level provider counts.
Future/Extended Scope (For Research) While the current map provides robust density visualization and filtering, the following objectives, originally outlined in the project scope, are avenues for future research and development:
Correlation Analysis: Explore relationships between provider density (or NP-to-physician ratio) and relevant county-level health outcomes (e.g., suicide, overdose rates), potentially using the County Health Rankings data.
NP-to-Physician Ratio: Calculate and map the NP-to-physician ratio for core specialties (family practice, emergency medicine, etc.).
Specialty Concordance: Analyze the degree of specialty concordance between Georgia NPs and their supervising physicians, potentially involving web scraping to obtain physician specialties.
Tech Stack:
Vite
Leaflet
GeoJSON
Papa Parse (for CSV data handling)
JavaScript/HTML/CSS
Special thanks to the team for their rigorous data cleaning and standardization work, which forms the basis for this accurate geospatial analysis!