Background
Equity is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In pledging to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, countries have committed to leave no one behind. Monitoring health inequalities is critical to understand who is being left behind as it can identify differences in health between different population subgroups. This is essential for the development of equity-oriented interventions, especially those on the path to universal health coverage.
To build and strengthen the capacity of countries to monitor health inequalities, WHO has developed the Health Equity Assessment Toolkit, a software application that enables users to explore and compare inequalities in countries using disaggregated data and summary measures of inequality that are visualized in an interactive and customizable way. The software is available in 2 editions:
- HEAT, the built-in database edition, which contains data from the WHO Health Equity Monitor database,
- HEAT Plus, the upload database edition, which does not contain any data, but allows users to upload and work with their own datasets.
HEAT is available as an online version and as a standalone version for use offline. HEAT Plus is currently only available as a standalone version. (http://www.who.int/gho/health_equity/assessment_toolkit/en/)
Both HEAT and HEAT Plus have been developed using R and a number of different R packages, including shiny. The software is free and open source and has been released under the GNU GPL v 2.0 license.
Objective
To further develop the Health Equity Assessment Toolkit, built-in database edition (HEAT) and upload database edition (HEAT Plus).
Tasks
The main tasks include
- Incorporating interactive visuals
- Incorporating maps
- Incorporating revised formulas for summary measures of inequality
- Adding new formulas for the calculation of additional summary measures of inequality (especially for dimensions with many subgroups, such as district-level data)
- Adding a new tab under Explore Inequality with special summary measure calculations for dimensions with many subgroups, such as district-level data
- Development of the online version of the upload database edition with a login feature for users to safely upload, store and manage their databases
- Developing a translation feature that translates the software into multiple languages
- Making other general improvements to the software, as required
- Fixing bugs in the software
- Teaching WHO staff members basics in R required to update the built-in database edition with the new data from the WHO Health Equity Monitor database
Required qualifications
- Expert knowledge in R and shiny
- Experience creating complex shiny applications
- Good knowledge and understanding of health inequality monitoring issues
- Excellent knowledge of English
Timeline
70 working days between February and June 2018 plus a three-day on-site training