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Data Across Sectors for Health Initiative: Promoting a Culture of Health Through Cross-Sector Data Networks
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Data Across Sectors for Health Initiative: Promoting a Culture of Health Through Cross-Sector Data Networks

Published: May 30, 2020
Publisher: Princeton, NJ: Mathematica
Health Population Health Foundations Research & Evaluation Evaluation Design

Authors

So O'Neil

Emily Hoe

Eva Ward

Ravi Goyal

Colleen Staatz

Key Findings

  • Community collaboratives participating in the DASH-supported All In: Data for Community Health learning network made some progress in data maturity, demonstrating slightly increased organizational commitment and staff expertise in the short time frame of the evaluation.
  • Challenges in collaboratives’ readiness to share and use data across sectors stemmed from difficulties in building data systems to facilitate cross-sector data sharing and use and in aligning priorities across partners to maintain strong networks.
  • Correlation between higher All In engagement and cross-sector data sharing capacity suggest the All In network as a potentially valuable resource (because it provides guidance on navigating data and legal challenges through webinars and podcasts and shares information through discussion board conversations and networking opportunities) to overcome some of these challenges—although funding uniformly remained the most commonly cited barrier.

Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) is one of several initiatives in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) ongoing efforts to build a Culture of Health and promote health equity. DASH supports collaboratives of community organizations focused on cross-sector data sharing to address social determinants of health. The evaluation assessed collaboratives along three dimensions: (1) readiness of information and technology systems to share data among organizations in different sectors, (2) organizational and technological capacity to use and process data from other sectors, and (3) use of cross-sector data.

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