Influenza Season Staffing Plan

Introduction

Project Overview:
The United States has an influenza season where more people than usual suffer from the flu. Some people, particularly those in vulnerable populations, develop serious complications and end up in the hospital. Hospitals and clinics need additional staff to adequately treat these extra patients. The medical staffing agency provides this temporary staff. The agency covers all hospitals in each of the 50 states, and the project will plan for the upcoming influenza season.

Goal:
Determine when to send staff, and how many, to each state.

Role: Data Analyst
Stakeholders: Hospitals and medical clinics

Data & Skills

Data:

452 rows × 36 columns
Time period: 2009–2017
Region: United States
Sources: CDC & U.S. Census Bureau
Datasets: Influenza deaths by geography, population data by geography, time, age, and gender

Skills:

Excel
Interpreted Business Requirements
Data Sourcing, Profiling, and Cleaning
Hypothesis Testing
Visual Analysis and Forecasting
Tableau Storyboarding
Stakeholder Communication

Project Planning

Data Sources:

CDC Wonder (Influenza and Pneumonia Death Rates)
U.S. Census Bureau (Population Demographics)

Tools Used: Excel (data merging and pivoting), Tableau (visualization)

Steps Taken:

Downloaded and merged flu mortality data with population estimates
Cleaned and reformatted data for consistency across years and categories
Created calculated fields for death rates per 100,000 people
Used pivot tables to analyze geographic, age, and gender-based trends
Built dashboards in Tableau to highlight high-risk areas

Influenza Analysis – Trends Over Time

This visualization shows influenza death trends by U.S. state from 2009–2017.
Deaths have remained consistent by state, and forecasts indicate this trend will continue into 2018–2019.

Influenza Analysis – Elderly Population

People over age 65 are considered high-risk and have higher mortality rates from influenza.
States with larger elderly populations show more flu-related deaths and should be prioritized.

Challenges and Solutions

Mismatched Data Granularity:
Mortality and population datasets used different region/age groupings
Solution: Standardized groupings and aligned categories

Data Formatting Issues:
Date inconsistencies and missing values
Solution: Cleaned/standardized formats prior to merging

Calculating Accurate Death Rates:
Raw death counts lacked context
Solution: Used normalized rates per 100,000 population

Recommendations

The 15 states with High and Medium need should be prioritized for staffing in December–March.

High Need States: California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York
Medium Need States: Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts

Flu vaccination and staffing policies should target these regions.