Tracking the Impact of Delaware's My Healthy Community Site
Assessing the importance of My Healthy Community for COVID-19 reporting and beyond
April 2024
This report was created by Green River. Data is pulled from Google Analytics for My Healthy Community and publicly available COVID-19 case data. Contact Green River for questions.
My Health Community and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic took a foot hold in the United States, in April of 2020, only 11 months after MHC was publicly launched, the site also became Delaware’s COVID-19 dashboard, presenting statistics on cases, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, testing, deaths, vaccinations, contact tracing, and in-person contagious school cases. The pandemic generated unprecedented interest in the site.
4,937
From May 2019 - December 2019, there were an average of 21 daily users on the MHC site. Launch day saw the biggest number of users (299) in 2019.
Pre-COVID users
29,441
From May 2019 - December 2019, there were an average of 127 daily pageviews on the MHC site. May 14, 2019 saw the biggest number of pageviews (2859) in 2019.
Pre-COVID pageviews
4,865,698
In 2020, there were an average of 84 daily users prior to the launch of the COVID dashboard and an average of 19,531 users after the launch of the COVID dashboard.
2020 users
11,943,471
In 2020, there were an average of 391 daily pageviews prior to the launch of the COVID dashboard an an average of 47,916 pageviews after the launch of the COVID dashboard.
2020 pageviews
My Healthy Community Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topic views on MHC are diversifying. While COVID-19 pages comprised nearly all (99.5%) of the pageviews on the MHC site during 2020, other pages have gained popularity on the site in recent years. Pages related to flu, mental health and substance abuse, and community profiles have all increased in popularity in recent years.
Key Takeaways
The My Healthy Community was a critical resource during the COVID-19 and continues to provide critical information on COVID-19 cases, vaccinations, hospitalizations, and more.
Site visits peaked during the beginning months of the COVID-19 pandemic and have gradually tapered off over subsequent virus seasons.
Site usage tends to be higher when COVID-19 incidence is higher, but users are increasingly exploring different topics on the site.
Since its launch in 2022, the influenza dashboard has received a sizable and increasingly large percentage of site views. Pages to the influenza dashboard currently comprise almost 9% of site views as of March 2024.
Pages related to Mental Health and Substance Use and Community Profiles are also relatively popular and represent areas for opportunity for site engagement.
The Launch of My Healthy Community
My Healthy Community (MHC) was launched on May 13, 2019 by the Delaware Department of Health and Human Services. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the site delivered "neighborhood-focused population health, environmental, and social determinant of health data to the public," including pages on public and private drinking water quality, air quality, asthma incidence, drug overdose deaths, suspected non-fatal drug overdoses, information from the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP), and youth use of prescription pain medications without a prescription.
Total Pageviews
May 2019 - March 2024
19,346,980
Total Users
May 2019 - March 2024
3,600,173
Total Sessions
May 2019 - March 2024
10,139,772
About this Report
This report explores user activity and engagement on the Delaware My Healthy Community site from March 2020 through March 2024. We focus on how the site was used during the peak of the COVID pandemic, and how site use has changed over the past four years. We explore how page views have diversified over time and the topics that site users are exploring. We show that the site remains a vital resource for Delawareans to find up-to-date information about their communities.
My Healthy Community Site Usage by the Numbers
Since its launch in 2019, the My Health Community site has reached millions of users.
COVID-19 and Site Engagement
Site use in the past five virus seasons has been driven in part by COVID-19 caseload. When COVID-19 cases are higher, site use tends to increase. The number of active users is higher in 2024 (average of 160 daily users) than it was in the months prior to the pandemic (average of 21 daily users).