Goodbye, Hello
As we welcome the new year, we take stock of our goodbyes and hellos here at Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH). Read about DASH’s developments over the past year and all that is to come – all in the name of promoting health equity through multisector data sharing.
When days in the northern hemisphere grow short and cold, the pace of living seems to slow down and center on essentials. With shelter, heat, and food in place, our minds can turn to observation and reflection. We ponder the past and the future, the goodbyes and the hellos.
“You say goodbye, and I say hello”, sang the Beatles in “Hello, Goodbye,” released just before the December of 1967… Goodbyes and Hellos, it turns out, are a fitting theme for us at DASH, too, as we reflect on 2023 and prepare for 2024. So, let’s take stock.
Our People
In 2023, we said goodbye to Clare Tanner, co-director and a co-originator of DASH itself. After 20-plus years with the Michigan Public Health Institute and all 8 years of DASH (MPHI co-hosts the DASH program office along with the Illinois Public Health Institute, or IPHI), Clare moved on to serve as the executive director at an organization advocating for people with disabilities.
Elissa Bassler, longtime Executive Director of IPHI, also announced plans to leave IPHI for her next chapter in 2024. Those are some big Goodbyes. We can’t express enough how important Clare’s and Elissa’s work has been for DASH and for public health generally.
As for Hellos, in 2023 program office staff got to gather face-to-face for an in-person retreat for the first time since COVID. We live and work in four different states, and while we are extremely grateful for the technology that allows us to regularly connect and interact, it was a treat to see our colleagues in full human form!
We have another in-person convening planned for this month, and this time, there will be several more chairs at the table. DASH programming and reach have grown, and, along with it, our staff. DASH said Hello to six new staff members in 2023, nearly doubling the size of our team! We are excited about our growing roster and the new capacities and dynamics this larger program office brings.
Our Values
The end of 2023 marked the end of a three-year workplace-equity initiative supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called the Equity Learning Lab. While we said Goodbye to the Equity Learning Lab, we are committed to continuing to center equity in our team and in our work through 2024 and beyond. This will make for a stronger, more responsive, more accountable DASH, and a DASH aligned with our other equity goals around data, health, and supporting collaborative efforts to build a culture of health.
Our Programs
The all-new All In: Data for Community Health
As our community grows and learns together, so do our resources and opportunities for peer support. DASH has been participating in the restructuring of All In, a community of national programs that support data-sharing collaboratives co-founded in 2016 by DASH and Academy Health, with support from RWJF and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
The landscape of data for community health has changed so much in the ensuing years, and the partnerships and programs of All In have been changing as well. The restructure means saying Goodbye to All In’s online community at community.allindata.org. December 12, 2023, was its last day of official support from DASH and other program partners.
That said, the all-new All In approach will be more responsive and relevant to its current member base, which has grown considerably in number and variety over the years. We are thrilled to co-steward this new All In and can’t wait to tell you more about it in early 2024.
The Incubator
In 2023, we wrapped up the evaluation stages of two prior grant cycles, Learning and Action in Policy and Partnership (LAPP) and Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD).
Our latest initiative, the Incubator, crystallizes the themes and lessons gathered from those initiatives, and asks: How can we lift up the voices of people with lived experiences of inequity? How can we change grantmaking to acknowledge the time, space, and shared leadership needed for real systems-change work?
The RFI process for the Incubator is wrapping up, and 2024 brings the next steps of this innovative initiative. Learn more about the Incubator here.
The CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative
In 2023 we said Hello to our first year as technical advisors supporting the CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative (DMI).
During that time, we conducted a literature review and a variety of needs-finding interviews and began accepting requests from governmental public health jurisdictions for help ranging from data integration to hiring equity.
We closed out the year with a presentation at the Region 6 Convening for the Public Health Infrastructure grant in Dallas about the importance of partnership with communities in public health data modernization efforts. We look forward to continuing this important and fulfilling work in 2024.
DASH Knowledge Base (DKB)
Soon to be available and freely accessible online, the DASH Knowledge Base (DKB) is a database of every project DASH has ever done, and we will be widening its scope to include non-DASH multisector-collaboration resources from all over the country.
Anyone interested will be able to search projects, tools, collaborations, and people, and filter by resource type, keyword, zip code, and more. Use the DKB to gain inspiration while formulating ideas, locate useful tools and frameworks to aid in your work, get in touch with others in your region doing similar work, and more.
Say Hello to this amazing resource in 2024! We can’t wait to unveil it!
Last year brought a lot of growth and change for DASH, and we are ready for more. We hope you are enjoying this season of ice—and reflection! of cold—and clarity! of darkness—and illumination! as much as we are. Onward, 2024.