Florida State University’s Claude Pepper Center has launched the Translational Data Platform, an innovative digital tool designed to provide interactive maps and dashboards that integrate data on behavior, occupation, health and economy across Florida’s aging populations.
After a year-long soft launch to gather feedback and refine its features, the platform is now available to the public and will continue to grow.
“The Translational Data Platform is revolutionizing how we understand and address the needs of older adults, providing unprecedented access to real-time data and insights that empower policymakers, researchers, and families to make informed decisions,” said Dawn Carr, director of the Claude Pepper Center.
The platform allows users to explore data in real-time to provide insights into matters specific to Florida. The state’s demographics — home to one of the largest concentrations of older adults in the U.S. — make Florida a key focus for studying national aging trends.
“The Translational Data Platform is revolutionizing how we understand and address the needs of older adults, providing unprecedented access to real-time data and insights that empower policymakers, researchers, and families to make informed decisions.”
– Dawn Carr, director of FSU’s Claude Pepper Center
“We’ve reached out to various stakeholders to find out what we could do to best support those making decisions about older adults and their well-being, but also families of older people in Florida,” Carr said.
The Translational Data Platform has been used to create a map focused on social isolation risk in adults over 65 to identify hotspots across the state which require attention. The map has already been presented to organizations such as the Florida Department of Elder Affairs to help policymakers focus their work.
“The main focus of our work is age and aging, and how they interact with health and policy,” said Fabio Correa, a research engineer at the Pepper Center. “Our maps and dashboards are constantly updated with the latest public data from authoritative sources, including our own peer-reviewed research.”
Built using Esri ArcGIS and Microsoft Power BI, the platform simplifies complex datasets. The state’s supportive legislative climate has allowed the Claude Pepper Center to utilize data from agencies across Florida.
“There is all this data just waiting for people to explore,” Correa said. “We at the Center are heavily invested in finding new ways to combine it, to present it, and to use it to help people understand their needs and understand how to address them.”
While the Translational Data Platform focuses on Florida, the team at the Pepper Center hopes to expand their platform to provide access to this information nationally.
“We aim to build on our work more broadly, and this platform in particular, to be able to provide resources that inform a variety of national issues. We believe that data science is a critical resource for informing policy and helping identify solutions for healthy aging,” Carr said.
For more information about the Translational Data Platform and the Claude Pepper Center, visit claudepeppercenter.fsu.edu