This data visualization was done for MSC2003: Biomedical Communication Technologies, in which we were to create a visual layout of data including at least three variables. During my Master of Public Health practicum at the BC Centre for Disease Control, I worked with some HIV statistics, and learned that while mortality due to HIV has significantly decreased over the years, the rate of new diagnoses has not. I thought this would be an interesting subject to visualize.

I used data from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s 2018 Surveillance Report on HIV in Canada, and contacted the Public Health Agency of Canada to request supplementary data tables. There was a lot of interesting data in this report, including new HIV diagnoses, rates per 100,000 population, and HIV cases by exposure category, all broken down by province. I used the 2015 PHAC HIV and AIDS in Canada Surveillance Report and Statistics Canada to find national data on mortality attributable to HIV/AIDS. I used age-standardized mortality rates to account for changes in age distribution in the population. Calculations were done in Microsoft Excel.

I used Tableau and Datawrapper and experimented with different ways to visualize the data, separating and combining variables to be as informative and clear as possible. I wrote text to accompany the figures and revised the figures and text in consultation with my professor and peers. The final graphs were done in Tableau and adjusted in Illustrator; layout was done in Illustrator.

Objective: to design a visual representation that invites comparison and encourages exploration of a multivariate dataset

Audience: public health students and professionals

Format: 11x17” poster

Client: Dr. Jodie Jenkinson

Medium: Excel, Datawrapper, Tableau, Illustrator

Year: 2020