How Lowcountry cities, organizations use COVID-19 data to help those in need

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Lowcountry cities, counties and nonprofit organizations are using data to determine how to spread out resources for those affected by COVID-19.

The City of Charleston recently introduced a website called City Health Dashboard, which tracks all types of health-related data for cities around the United States from diabetes to breast cancer and now, COVID-19. It was created by doctors at the medical school at NYU.

The website shows risk levels for certain zipcodes in the City of Charleston. As of the publication of this article, the following zipcodes had the highest risk: 29403, 29405, 29407.

“It should help us moving forward as we’re looking at the different health priorities in our communities to begin to set some priorities by better targeting the resources we have around to us,” Wellness Coordinator for the City of Charleston Paul Wieters said.

Health Program Manager at Trident United Way Joey Current said tools like this can be used for targeted outreach.

“United Way has used this tool and others to target our food access work in light of COVID in our food response, where we’ve partnered with certain cities to do food distribution and outreach,” he added.