Case Study : 9Health Fair

Client
9Health Fair is Colorado's largest and most-trusted non-profit health fair program offering free and low-cost health awareness and educational screenings in hundreds of communities throughout Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. 9Health Fair's mission is to encourage individuals to assume responsibility for their own health by providing access to health screenings at over 170 health fair site locations during a 9-day period in April of each year. The health fair has impacted the lives of over 1.7 million people since its inception in its 28-year history, as it now serves over 100,000 people each year with up to 25 free or low-cost screenings. They do all of this with a staff of 18 people and the assistance of over 18,000 volunteers.

Challenge
9Health Fair had a pre-existing web site that, but they were facing the following website issues and opportunities:

• Outdated
  The website was outdated in appearance, functionality structure and presentation of content.
• Lack of internal control
  There was no real ability to internally control or update the content on the website.
• Leverage their website as a business tool
  The opportunity existed to integrate the web site into their business model and maximize it as tool to help manage the health fair and its 170 corresponding health fair site locations.
• Leverage the web to improve the participant experience
  The opportunity existed to improve the participant experience via online participant registration capabilities, or subscription-based electronic communication tools that would enable 9Health Fair to stay in-touch with participants in a cost efficient manner.

The most exciting challenge on the above list that presented the most immediate opportunity for 9Health Fair was the idea of developing an easy-to-use web-based business tool that would serve as a portal of dynamic information for multiple key user groups with different roles. The vision would be to enable these key user groups, whether internal or external to better manage data and information for which they were responsible via a user-friendly and seamless web application. 9Health Fair wanted to be able to deliver appropriate content at the appropriate time with the capability to engage in secure, two-way activity when appropriate.

Thus, XploreNet and 9Health Fair entered the web development project with the following two primary goals:

• Confirm and build upon 9Health Fair's brand equity with a new design; new, revised and more relevant content; and a more straight-forward navigation.
• Improve operational efficiencies through the enablement of more effective communication internally and externally-primarily with their volunteer base.

Note: The opportunity to use their website and the Internet to improve the participant experience was tabled for a future phase due to the nature of the initial scope of work.

Solution
Given the aforementioned goals, XploreNet began by doing our homework and studying 9Health Fair's business model as much as possible on our own. Additionally, XploreNet sat down with 9Health Fair and let them educate us on all of the appropriate, operational facets of their business and processes. This led to an in-depth collaboration between the two of us in determining the exact and specific requirements for the web development project. The final scope of work entailed the following primary components-the new website's capabilities and functionality are too numerous to mention and list them all exhaustively:

Look & Feel
XploreNet developed a new look & feel in keeping with 9Health Fair's current brand and further building upon their association with title sponsor, 9News.

Content Management
XploreNet developed a Content Management Solution (CMS) that enables 9Health Fair to internally maintain all appropriate and time-sensitive content on the website without the need for any technical expertise or assistance.

Site & Volunteer Management
XploreNet developed a complex, password protected back-office admin tool that enables all appropriate 9Health Fair staff and volunteers to communicate. Arguably the most critical and valuable asset of the 9health Fair is the 18,000 people who volunteer each year. While the health fair would not be possible without these individuals, these 18,000 people can create management challenges as it relates to ensuring resources are allocated across site locations in a manner that ensures they are all being utilized to their fullest. The volunteer management component of the web application that XploreNet developed streamlines this process.

Each health fair site location is run by a volunteer site coordinator and all site coordinators report to the full-time, 9Health Fair volunteer administrator. The site coordinator is responsible for determining the screenings that will be offered and managing all the volunteers at their location. They do this with the help from one or more assistant site coordinators, which can be designated as medical or non-medical coordinators. The site coordinator and their assistants are given access to the system specific to their location in order to manage their volunteer resources including:

• Screenings Offered
  The site coordinator can manage what screenings and offerings are going to be available at their site location.
• Task Assignments
  Volunteers may be medical volunteer or non-medical volunteers. Medical volunteers are managed in greater detail in order to ensure their area of expertise is being leveraged. For example, many medical volunteers belong to specific health care or medical associations and volunteer to help with specific screenings. However, not all screenings are offered at every health fair site location. Thus, the system enables the site coordinator and volunteer administrator to ensure they are assigning a volunteer to a site location that corresponds to the volunteer's screening expertise.
• Scheduling
  The site coordinators can keep track of and schedule the times and locations in which each volunteer is willing to work.
• Resource Management
  Frequently site locations will either have too many or too few volunteers. The system allows the volunteer administrator access to all site location information and all volunteers. They can manage the movement of volunteers in the system from one site location to another as needed. Volunteer history can be tracked and they can be easily moved to not only where they are needed most but also to site locations and dates that match the volunteer's request.

Supply Management
Integrated into the same admin tool referenced above for the volunteers is a supply management system to allocate and track all necessary supplies at each 9Health Fair site. With over 100,000 people attending the 9Health Fair each year, a large quantity of medical supplies are needed to conduct the screenings that are offered. Since all screenings are not offered at each site location this can create supply management and allocation challenges. If one site location does not have enough supplies they may be forced to turn participants away, or if they have too many supplies, it is a waste of resources. The supply management component of the web application that XploreNet developed streamlines this process.

The allocation and tracking of supplies is managed by a full-time, 9Health Fair supply administrator. Prior to the new system, the supply administrator would manually track what each site location needed in terms of the supplies associated with the screenings that each site was planning to offer. However, the screenings that were planned to be offered would change frequently-often too frequently for the supply administrator to keep up with the changes and incorrect supplies would subsequently be shipped to site locations.

Since the new system integrates the site coordinator's screening information with supply management, there is transparent communication between the site coordinators and the supply administrator. At any time the supply administrator can run a report giving them up-to-the-minute data to see what supplies are needed where. When the final supply distribution is to take place the system creates a complex report in a matter of seconds for the supply administrator. In previous years this report was created manually and took days to create, often with costly errors. In addition, once the fair is over the system allows the supply administrator to record what supplies are returned and easily track missing or damaged supplies.

Find-a-Fair
XploreNet developed a user-friendly tool enabling participants to easily find the 9Health Fair site nearest them. While the Find-a-Fair functionality was a smaller component to this project, it is arguably the most visible. This feature is likely used with the most frequently by the general public to locate the most convenient 9Health Fair site location to attend. The system implemented leverages the Google Maps API. A user simply indicates what type of search they want to do: city, zip, or county search. As an example, if they select a zip code search they can indicate the exact radius around that zip code and the system will conduct the search accordingly. Additionally, if they are looking for a specific screening that may not be available at all site locations, they can indicate the screening they need. The system will provide a listing of locations matching their request and since it's integrated with Google Maps a simple click of the mouse will plot the location on a map that they can then reference and/or print-out and use for directions.

Significance
Feedback in the website's short life thus far and in its first health fair season has been very positive (having only launched in March 2007). The majority of volunteers and users of the new behind-the-scenes, online tools, who have typically been accustomed to a very manual and paper-intensive management process, have had very positive things to say.

For just about all of them the largest benefit has been improved and more effective communications, as well as time-savings. The time saved now enables site coordinators and other volunteers to spend more time working with people, which is what the 9Health Fair is all about, versus taking valuable time to conduct manual processes that are better suited for automation. The long-term anticipated result is a more efficient, error-free 9Health Fair that enables growth into more and more health fair site locations and enables the ability to serve more and more people-which is their ultimate goal: serve as many lives as possible.