R Exchange 2024

Nathan Brown

Manager, Health Planning & Insights
Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand

Nathan is an unconventional analyst. Having done his degree in marketing and film then falling in love with analytics, he applies marketing principles and narrative structure to analytics on the health system to bring out the stories of people through data and communicate complex systematic problems to a wide range of stakeholders. Nathan has worn many hats in his time and uses his background to create engaging content that is responsive to his audience because at the end of the day, insight comes from understanding.

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"How to create insight that is approachable and engaging"

Analytics is plagued with smart people. It’s a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that we can inform large scale decisions through our work, the curse is that analytics is an amorphous blob for those on the outside. Too often, I see incredible work being overlooked because people simply don’t understand it and don’t relate to it. Over the course of this talk, I will talk through critical points in getting your message across and getting your audience to engage with the work but to save you some time, the answer to the question, “How do you create insight that is approachable and engaging?” is, “it depends”.