A national multi-region data-driven initiative focused on childhood obesity prevention and policy insights, backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with dynamic interactive content across states, demographics, and program areas.

Tech Stack

My Role

Responsible for maintaining and improving the State of Childhood Obesity website—a custom Classic WordPress theme. My focus was on stabilizing and modernizing a complex legacy codebase to improve performance, maintainability, and accessibility across the site.

Key Contributions

• Refactored front-end code and build processes to introduce proper JS and CSS compilation where none existed.
• Consolidated and removed duplicate JavaScript libraries and dependencies to reduce bloat and improve load times.
• Reconstructed a React-powered data visualization page by locating and restoring the original source from version control, then aligning it with the live production bundle.
• Refactored the site’s header megamenu to meet accessibility best practices and enhance keyboard/screen reader navigation.
• Managed recurring CDC data updates, including modifying JSON datasets and updating D3/Backbone visualization logic.
• Developed a custom Python script to automate yearly YRBS data imports, converting CDC spreadsheet exports into the required JSON format—streamlining a previously manual process.

Impact

These improvements made the site faster, more accessible, and easier to maintain. The refactoring work reduced technical debt, while the automation tools cut hours of manual data processing into minutes. Together, these updates created a more stable, sustainable foundation for ongoing public health data reporting.