DASH Blog

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The 500 Cities Project: What’s on the Horizon

Posted on by DASH-Admin
What is 500 Cities? You may know that the secret to a healthier city is sharing data, but you have also probably discovered that finding and collecting data can be very challenging, particularly at the community level. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the CDC Foundation, recently released a wealth of data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Using a multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) ap...
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Exploring the Intersection of Clinical Data, Claims and Social Determinants of Health

Posted on by DASH-Admin
At a recent HealthDoers Peer-to-Peer Event, 75+ stakeholders met to discuss promising approaches for combining social determinants of health (SDOH) data with traditional health care data. Kelly Cronin, MPH, director of the Office of Care Transformation at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and Niall Brennan, former chief data officer at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), provided a national-level perspective on the role of SD...
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The Secret to a Healthier City: Sharing Data

Posted on by DASH-Admin
To be effective and strategic in their decision-making, city leaders striving to build a culture of health need diverse, usable, high-quality data sources that are integrated, timely, relevant and geographically precise. This post was co-authored by Peter Eckart, Alison Rein and Nick Wallace. Data can be a powerful tool for understanding issues, making smarter decisions, and improving results – and city leaders can help build a culture of health by supporting the collection, access and u...
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An Experiment in Collaboration: The All In Chicago Regional Meeting

Posted on by DASH-Admin
In late November, three Chicago-based data-driven health collaborations came together to test a hypothesis: by engaging with similar initiatives to share experiences, lessons and common barriers, could they forge a coordinated path to move their work forward? The three projects are supported by three distinct funders, but all are part of a nationwide learning collaborative called All In: Data for Community Health, which hosted a meeting to expressly cultivate connections among those worki...
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Sharing Data to Help Food Bank Clients Manage Their Chronic Conditions

Posted on by DASH-Admin
DASH Project Spotlight: Food for Health: Coordinating Care Across Sectors to Improve Health Among Vulnerable Populations Download project profile (PDF) Lead agency: Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation Partners/collaborators: Parkland Health and Hospital System, North Texas Food Bank The challenge Not surprisingly, a growing body of evidence links food insecurity with diet-related medical conditions like diabetes and hypertension. These diseases can be nearly impossible to ma...
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Sharing Data Across Sectors to Build Healthy Environments

Posted on by DASH-Admin
Through the integration of health data and evidence from sectors like housing and education, local residents and leaders have the ability to better detect problems, test interventions, and ultimately transform environments to improve health. Many of the strongest predictors of health and well-being extend beyond hospital walls and into our neighborhoods, schools, work places and homes. Tackling the root causes of health disparities often requires that communities engage and partner across mul...
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Insights from Data-Driven Health Collaborations

Posted on by DASH-Admin
This blog profiles community projects working to harness data from multiple sectors to develop more effective health interventions and policies. We know that the key drivers of health are social, economic, environmental and behavioral, but forging cross-sector connections at the community level is hard work. This blog profiles twenty-five community projects working to harness data from multiple sectors to develop more effective health interventions and policies. They are part of a nationwide ...
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Bridging the Data Gap Between Health Care and Social Services

Posted on by DASH-Admin
DASH Project Spotlight: Maine Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) Download project profile (PDF) Lead agency: HealthInfoNet Partners/collaborators: Seven federally qualified health centers, three critical access hospitals, and two community action agencies The challenge In Maine, people living in isolated rural areas often face barriers to getting the care they need. Many lack adequate transportation to medical appointments or are forced to make difficult choices between payin...
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Explaining the Value of Data Sharing: Lessons Learned

Posted on by DASH-Admin
Health leaders, including those in public health, are increasingly engaging and mobilizing community partners from multiple sectors to share and use data to address social determinants and improve population health. Building meaningful relationships with other sectors requires engagement and determination of common values that clearly map to the potential benefits of collaboration and data sharing. This is no easy task, as different entities engaged in data sharing projects, particularly those f...
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Creating a More Complete Picture of Health in NYC Neighborhoods

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DASH Project Spotlight: Neighborhood Tabulation Areas: Enhancing Community Health Improvement Capacity in NYC through Shared Information at the Small Area Level Download project profile (PDF) Lead agency: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Partners/collaborators: NYC Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence, NYC Department of Planning, United Hospital Fund of New York, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Fund for Public Health in New York The challenge In New Y...
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