Leveraging Algorithm-Provided Sites in the Community Partner Site Selection Process
Eight of the nine partner counties were provided a list of optimized potential sites. The number of sites used in the optimization varied by county and was determined by community needs as determined by county public health entities. One county had existing testing locations that were utilized directly. When there was uncertainty in the number of potential sites, several optimizations were performed and shared with the community partners in each county. Each list was shared with a statement of the model’s limitations:This model focuses entirely on geographic locations, and has no knowledge of access limitations, or other factors that would impact site selection. Sites nearby each proposal should also be considered as alternatives, as they may provide practical benefits with negligible impact on the optimization objective. It is also important to note that the geographic center of census tracts may not accurately represent the population centers.Following this warning, proposed sites and the block group centers assigned to each proposal were listed and displayed as a map such as that presented in Fig. Example summary map for proposal reports