Seattle 4 Rotary member and Rotarian Malaria Partners’ Board Chair, Jeff Pritchard, introduced Elaine Gibbons, Vice President for Global Engagement and Communications at PATH, and Neal Myrick, Global Head of the Tableau Foundation.  They described how their collective work went beyond intellectual engagement to help solve a problem. “We forged ahead to show how Tableau could deliver a fundamental benefit with a highly motivated PATH workforce to get the job done,” she said. “Our strategic partnership embarked on a multi-year commitment to access data tools to support the mission,” he said.

Their strategic partnership’s success was predicated on key values:  culture, commitment, competence, communication, and conflict resolution.  The work to tackle malaria started in Zambia with their Ministry of Health where the PATH/Tableau partnership provided software and funding to support the ministry.

Tableau reached out to other data-based organizations such as Slalom, Datablick, Alteryx, and others to join a five-year effort to demonstrate how data analytics can be applied to manage and eliminate malaria.  The PATH/Tableau partnership helped the Zambian government with expertise on how to use that data to eradicate malaria.

 

“We developed a technology stack to build data visualizations that could be applied in workshops where Zambian health officials learned how data could be applied,” Mr. Myrick said.  “We like to focus on results.  So between 2014-2018, there were 90,000 malaria deaths and now they are trending toward zero.”

 

Ms. Gibbons and Mr. Myrick said the Zambia project unfolded over 18 months of data building, training and application.  They recently expanded to the African country of Senegal where the same technology ‘stack’ was created and implemented in 10 days.   The PATH/Tableau partnership recently won a $4.2M grant to expand their efforts into other African countries.

 

Both expressed optimism to scale the visualization and platform to HIV and other infectious diseases in the future.  Application of the predicated analytics dashboard showed on a map where water could breed disease-spreading mosquitoes, or when to expect a rainstorm and ultimately how many people may get malaria, generating steps local officials can take to prevent a raging outbreak.  The key is to leverage data to help eradicate the disease.

 

One of their greatest challenges for PATH is to determine organizations that are open to partnerships and to think in a different way about how the arrangement would be beneficial.  From Tableau Foundation’s perspective, they seek partners that are doing good work ‘on the ground.’  Tableau seeks proven NGO partners that can benefit from their technology prowess.

 

President Kim opened the meeting with Skip Rowland and Trish Bostrom leading in Jingle Bells accompanied by Freeman Fong on the piano and followed by a stirring inspiration delivered by Nick Anderson.  With the passing of two long-time Rotarians and community leaders, president Kim asked Bob Johnson to remember Jim McCurdy Sr. (fair winds & following seas) and Jeff Pyatt to remember Ralph Davis (rest easy).     

 

Heather Fitzpatrick reported on the work of the Community Service Committee, followed by Mariah Kimpton who welcomed Rotarians to the Rotaract Holiday Social on December 19.  For more details, see the Totem.