World Immunization Week Story
World Immunization Week begins today. Let’s pretend that you are a reporter for a Chinese newspaper or TV station and that you just received this press release about this event from the World Health Organization:
From: <>
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 8:14 PM
Subject: WHO information for journalists for World Immunization Week 2014: "Are you up-to-date?"
Dear Journalists,
For World Immunization Week 2014, under the slogan “Immunization for a healthy future. Know, Check, Protect”, WHO is encouraging people to check whether they are up-to-date with their vaccinations.
To mark this important week, journalists are invited to contact WHO experts about new products and activities introduced during this year’s World Immunization Week or to find out more about WHO’s work in supporting global immunization goals. Some highlights of WHO activities in its regions are listed below.
In line with the recommendations of the Global Vaccine Action Plan, WHO is making advances in using new mobile and Internet technologies for this campaign, to deliver health information directly to people’s mobile phones and social media accounts. Communication through new channels is supplemented by traditional poster campaigns, public information sessions and media workshops that take place throughout the world during World Immunization Week.
More information is here:
Twitter #RUuptodate
Additional background
Immunization coverage
Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011-2020
Contacts to arrange interviews
Fadela Chaib, Communications Officer, Tel: +41 22 791 3228, Mobile: 41 79 475 5556,
Email:
Tarek Jasarevic, Communications Officer, Tel: +41 22 791 5099, Mobile: +41 79 367 6214,
Email:
Email:
Highlights of World Immunization Week around the world
South-East Asia
Focus: Ensuring that people are up-to-date with their vaccinations.
For more information: Vismita Gupta-Smith, Communications Officer
WHO Office for South-East Asia
Tel: +91 11 233 70804, Mobile: +91 98 713 29861, E-mail:
Western Pacific
Focus: providing hepatitis B vaccination to newborns within 24 hours of birth. Thirty-four countries and areas in the region are participating in the campaign.
Laura Sminkey, Acting Public Information Officer
WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific
Tel: +632 528 9992, Mobile: +63 999 889 3974, Email:
Supporting partners for World Immunization Week
ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership, American Academy of Pediatrics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI Alliance, Lions Clubs International, Save the Children, United Nations Foundation, UNICEF, the United States Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
How would you do this story?
First, go to the World Immunization Week website. Can you find some important facts about immunizations?
Your editor says: “We need good quotes for this story.” Whom would you interview?
Your editor then says: “How does China compare with other countries? Do we do better than other countries or worse than other countries?”
As a data journalist, you know that you might find the answer in data. Can you find an Excel spreadsheet with immunization data? (It’s hard, but try.)
Then, let’s all use the file I am providing called “immunization_coverage_estimates_series.xls”. It has four worksheets. One worksheet shows the percentage of the population that has received the “third dose of diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid and pertussis vaccine”. It looks like this:
Let’s sort the countries by the 2012 percentage.
Then, insert a new Column A and do a “RANK”:
Based on that ranking, what can we say about China? How does China compare with other countries? Look at where the United States ranks. Do any other countries surprise you?
Let’s do one more thing with the DTP3 data. Let’s see how the coverage in each country has changed from 1997 to 2012 (a 15-year period). So, hide all of the columns except the ones you want to work with. Then create a new column that shows the change from 1997 to 2012:
(In this case, let’s do a simple subtraction – not “percentage change”. That is because these numbers already are percents.)
Copy the formula down the column for all of the other countries. Then sort the list so that the countries with the biggest increases in immunization rates are at the top. Finally, filter your list to hide countries that don’t have data for 1997:
What conclusions can you draw? What does this say about China?
Highlight in yellow the rows for the five most populous countries in the world: China, India, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil.What could you say in your story?
If there is time, we can do this for the other kinds of vaccines, too!
Think about the story. What would your lead be? What information would you use from WHO? What would you use from your data analysis?
Your editor says: “We need a chart to go with this story!” So you take the worksheet for HepB3 and filter it for the five biggest countries. (I have already done this for you. See the HepB3 worksheet.)
You want to paste that data into a new worksheet. So select the data that you want, and tell Excel to select the visible cells only. (Note: This works for me on my version of Excel; I’m not sure if it will work for your version of Excel.)
Then, use Ctrl-C to copy those visible cells to your clipboard:
Then paste those visible cells into a new worksheet:
Look at the worksheet called “For Chart”. It looks like this:
Now, let’s make a chart to compare the five countries. Select the data, including the column headings, and go to Insert > Chart:
Then move the chart to a new location – a separate worksheet:
Now I can make the chart pretty. I don’t need a legend:
I can edit the title, and I can change the columns to be different colors:
I can also tell Excel to put the data labels at the end of each column:
In the end, here is what my chart could look like: