VA Open Data

[leggitta]

Since public money is used to both create conditions for a variety of mental health conditions (e.g. PTSD, TBI, suicide) to develop and pay for their subsequent research and treatment, it's in the public interest to understand how our own defense spending is creating a mental health crisis in the military and veteran communities.

Right now I'd like to gather the available datasets, including meta-analyses of what's already been published on the topic. But ultimately I'd like to create some engaging and interactive visualizations for public awareness.

I'd be willing to take lead but my skills are limited to Python and MYSQL. It might be nice to have R and JS folks aboard too.

Example dataset from the VA below
https://catalog.data.gov/dataset?collection_package_id=2f1fe591-ca2d-455a-aede-cc6a5ef2c5cd

[leggitta]

The Department of Veterans Affairs has over 800 publicly available datasets. Some of their goals in releasing this data are to ...

1. Greater choice for veterans

• Compare the performance of VA facilities to private sector facilities at a local level

2.) Focus resources more efficiently

• Balance services provided by the VA with services provided by the community
• Evaluate employee performance
• Detect fraud, abuse, waste
• Maximize patient outcomes
• Minimize cost

3.) Suicide prevention

• Identify at risk individuals
• Evaluate the performance of existing suicide prevention programs

I think these are important issues because the VA is our model for private healthcare in this country. Every time the VA makes bad headlines, opponents of public healthcare scream about how the government has no business in healthcare. Of course, I'm biased because I'm an Army vet myself 😉

The VA Open Data Portal (with links to datasets)
https://www.va.gov/data/

[leggitta]

If anyone is interested while the project is in its early concept / data mining phase, I've started a repo on my github https://github.com/leggitta/VA-Open-Data. I'm playing around with python, mysql, bokeh, html and flask to build interactive visualizations like this one ...
https://leggitta.github.io/ptsd_by_state.html. I'd love any constructive criticism on code, concept, user interface, as well as brainstorming on how to move forward.

[jdbedics]

Hi Alan! This looks really great. I'm a former VA employee and clinical psychologist with expertise in suicide treatment. I'm a professor now and only work with R. I would be happy to be part of the conversation and development of these ideas.

[hfuhruhurr]

This hits a lot of right notes for me. I'm a vet, a data geek, and a former health care provider who's (unfortunately) seen a glimpse of the inner workings of a VA hospital from the doctor point of view. I'll check out your repo and give you some feedback.