Data Analytics Project Portfolio

Impact of Local Food Infrastructure on Chronic Disease Outcomes in New York State by County

Description: Food access research has provided evidence for the importance of local access to fresh, nutritious foods to support population health and reduce the burden of chronic disease (Brown et. al., 2008; Bublitz et. al., 2019; Gittelsohn et. al., 2012). Food access research has historically focused on income and access at the census tract level (for example, the USDA Food Access Research Atlas) as well as newer research reviewing county level data across the U.S. (Deller et. al., 2020). This analysis expands upon that county level research by focusing on NYS counties in particular. The current analysis examines local food environment and food access metrics compared to chronic disease indicators using data from USDA's Food Environment Atlas (FEA) and NYS' Community Health Indicators Report (CHIR).

With a growing trend in the locally-grown-food movement (Tran et. al., 2025) and state-level economic incentives to purchase locally produced food (NYS G&C), it is also of interest to examine the impact of local food infrastructures (such as farmer's markets and direct to consumer sales) on population health outcomes. This analysis explores the FEA and CHIR data to compare the per capita proportion of local food infrastructure to chronic disease indicators at the NYS county level.

This analysis project is currently underway and expected to be completed Summer 2026. Current progress includes architecting the relational schema in PostgreSQL, performing ELT processes on disparate USDA/CHIR sources, and initial exploratory data analysis. Analysis will be performed using SQL and R. Final deliverables will include a full analysis report, a public data dashboard in Power BI, and static visualizations using ggplot2 in R. This is an independent project.

Analytical Tools Used: Microsoft Excel, PostgresSQL, R, Microsoft Power BI

Current Work-In-Progress SQL Script: PDF, TXT

New York State Food as Medicine Program Map

Description: This interactive map displays a public directory of food as medicine (FAM) service providers across New York State. The project was implemented by the New York State Food as Medicine Coalition to advance their mission of being a resource to FAM stakeholders. The project addresses the lack of standardized, easy to access referral pathways for patients into FAM services. It gives clinicians and other care providers a centralized, interactive database for finding appropriate FAM services for their clients and for submitting referrals.

As project manager and data analyst on this project, I collaborated with food system experts from New York and California to design a survey tool for data collection, coordinated the data collection effort, cleaned and analyzed the dataset, and created a Tableau Public dashboard to display the FAM program directory in a user friendly format. The dashboard has been widely shared, including an endorsement from the Federal Nutrition Advisory Coalition managed by Tufts University (see slide 35). The final deliverable was published in July of 2025.

Analytical Tools Used: Jotform Tables, Excel PowerQuery, R in Rstudio, PowerBI, Tableau Public

Full Analysis Report: View PDF

Deliverable: Tableau Public Dashboard (archive copy published with permission)

New York State Food Supplier Map

Description: The New York State Food Supplier Map is an interactive dashboard displaying a directory of business-to-business wholesalers, retailers, farms, and other food suppliers in New York State that can provide food for food pantries and food as medicine (FAM) programs. The project was sponsored by the New York State Food as Medicine Coalition in response to the growing difficulties for these programs in sourcing food.

As project manager and data analyst on this project, I collaborated with food system experts from New York, North Carolina, Iowa, and California to design a survey tool for data collection, coordinated the data collection effort, built and analyzed the dataset, and created a Tableau Public dashboard to display the food supplier directory in a user friendly format. The dashboard has been widely shared across the state and nationally, including an endorsement from the Federal Nutrition Advisory Coalition managed by Tufts University (see slide 35). The final deliverable was published in March of 2025.

Analytical Tools Used: Jotform Tables, Excel PowerQuery, R in RStudio, Tableau Public

Full Analysis Report: View PDF

Deliverable: Tableau Public Dashboard (archive copy published with permission)

Vineyard Database Analysis Program

Description: The San Lorenzo Seminary is a spiritual formation and retreat house located on 28 acres of fertile ranchland in Santa Ynez, California. In 2014, the owners planted 1.5 acres of grapevines for winemaking. Grapevines are sensitive to temperature changes and require specific temperature ranges for proper grape development. Due to the significant daily fluctuations in air and surface temperatures in the Santa Ynez Valley, a temperature monitoring system is a necessity.

A weather station was installed in the vineyard to take temperature measurements every 10mins. The Seminary recruited myself and a software developer, Michael Coco, to create a program for analyzing the temperature data, which we named Vineyard Database Analysis Program (VDBA). Michael coded the software, and I verified analytical outputs in Excel and PostgreSQL for testing and quality assurance. I also authored the Technical User Manual for the program. The vineyard owners use this data to monitor Chill Hours and Growing Days and respond appropriately to changing weather conditions. This was a volunteer project completed in May of 2015.

Analytical Tools Used: VDBA Program, Excel, PostgreSQL

Deliverable 1: Technical User Manual (.pdf), authored by Vic Russak

Deliverable 2: VDBA Software Program (.exe), authored by Michael Coco

Professional Publications

Comparing life cycle environmental impacts of food access and consumption pre- and during COVID 19 in New York State's Capital Region

Journal: Science of the Total Environment, Volume 949, 1 November 2024.

Contribution: Writing - Review and Editing

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175037

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced household food shopping, food consumption, and food waste generation. However, the dietary environmental impacts for different income groups during COVID-19 remain unknown. To analyze dietary environmental impacts for various income groups, a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted based on two electronic food access surveys implemented in the New York State's Capital Region during the COVID-19 pandemic and public and proprietary databases. We found that life cycle global warming potential, cumulative energy demand, acidification potential, and water resource depletion of per capital food consumption in the studied area tended to be lower during COVID-19 than pre-COVID-19. In contrast, life cycle eutrophication during COVID-19 was slightly higher than pre-COVID-19. The environmental impacts occurring at the food production stage were higher than those at the local transportation and waste disposal stages. The lowest income group had the lowest dietary environmental impacts due to their lowest food consumption of all the food categories. The second-highest income group had the highest dietary environmental impacts, since they consumed the most red meat which has a high impact intensity. This is the first study to our knowledge to investigate the differences in dietary environmental impacts among income groups during COVID-19.