Sarapis

The Florida Association of Community Health Centers is responsible for maintaining communication with over 600 federally-funded Community Health Centers throughout Florida during disasters like hurricanes.

Like many organizations doing this type of work, they send out a long online survey during disasters asking participants for status reports and needs requests. This information is collected into a spreadsheet. The form takes over 15 minutes to fill out. A big reason it takes so long is that the CHC have to give FACHC information it already has: the name and location of the health centers and information about the people who're filling out the forms.

This makes what could be a quick survey into a long one that CHCs are less likely to complete. This process also wastes FACHC's time because they need to collate the submissions to records of CHC locations and people that they already have from previous information collection processes.

The results: a situational awareness picture that is never as complete as it could be.

Sarapis developed a two-part solution for FACHC:

an Airtable for use by FACHC staff organized like a CRM where they can manage organization, contact and site information, project event and task information, and even use Airtable Apps to send text messages and email messages to CHC member messages.
a custom web app for use by CHC members where they can login with their email or SMS messages, see news and updated from the network, fill out information about themselves and their sites, and see information on a map. All this info goes to the FACHC Airtable, which is the one and only backend for the app.

The Airtable Backend

FACHC uses HRSA's CHC data as a single source of truth for the state's CHCs. We loaded that data into Airtable and then FACHC added in their own lists of CHC contacts. We then added additional fields and tables, enabling FACHC to track contact attendance at events and other relevant organizing info. At this point, FACHC had a working CRM system and used it to further enrich their data.

Next, we designed and built a custom web app that uses the FACHC Airtable as a database. The app is designed to be as easy as possible for CHC members. Instead of logging in with a traditional user names and (easily forgettable) password, users login by submitting their email or phone number and receiving a magic link that logs them in with a click.

Once logged in, they can edit and confirm their contact info, and fill out a brief survey about the status of each of their organization's sites. Since we already have lots of information about the organization, their sites and their contacts in the Airtable, we can significantly reduce the amount of time they spend on their responses. With one click a user can declare a site fully operational or they can indicate they're having issues, which triggers additional questions based on their location characteristics and their responses. FACHC gets all the info they need to keep track of everything in the Airtable they're already using. This reduces the time a CHC members needs to update a site from 10 minutes to 1 minute - making a huge difference in response rates. In a recent test, 5x more CHC members updated site info using the app than they did when asked to fill out the online form.

Responses are instantly logged in the Airtable, updating data dashboards with pivot tables, maps and more in real time. Since the Airtable is so easy to customize, FACHC staff have added tables to enable them to track the network's inventory and assets. They've also build new features with the Airtable's forms that makes it easier for CHCs to request inventory items like PPE and generators from FACHC.

We believe the flexibility of Airtable with the capabilities of light-weight custom apps is a transformative combination of the disaster management sector, and we look forward to spreading this practice throughout the sector.

Interested in learning more? Contact us.