Creating a Collaborative Data System for Healthier Communities

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Submission Date: December 2016

State/Territory Submitted on the Behalf of: Washington

States/Territories Involved: Washington

Funding Source: CDC

CDC Funding:

Yes

CDC Funding (Specified):

(DP14-1422) State and Local Public Health Actions to Prevent Obesity, Diabetes and Heart Disease

Domain Addressed:

Epidemiology and Surveillance

Public Health Issue:

When a person goes to the doctor’s office, medical records only show part of their story. At-risk populations often face complex health conditions, behavioral health issues, and other issues that are made worse by housing instability, food insecurity, unemployment, and more.
Filling the information gap about patients circumstances related to healthcare, community services, criminal justice, education, and housing can help providers give better care to their patients.

Program Action:

Healthy Living Collaborative (HLC) of Southwest Washington partnered with local healthcare systems to form the Connections Workgroup to ensure that providers are more connected to their communities and their needs  and to make communities active partners for health system reform, rather than targets of that reform. The workgroup is building cross-sector system of data focused in Clark County, with the hope of expanding to communities in other counties.
HLC is partnering with Providence Center for Outcomes Research & Education, a non-profit research laboratory that has been at the forefront of similar work in Oregon. To ensure a collaborative regional approach to building community-based data infrastructure, the HLC supported site visits with 17 multi-sector partners in Southwest Washington.

Impact/Accomplishments:

Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington’s Community Health Worker pilot project will help to define relevant data measures for community-based data collection.
The cross-sector data system will also provide guidance to organizations such as HLC on where to invest and what interventions will have the greatest impact.
Site visit participants strongly expressed the need to have cross-sector to:

  • Design & implement interventions to address need
  • Measure & monitor efforts
  • Identify kep partners & improve community care coordination
  • Evaluate intervention impact
  • Support intervention improvement & decision-making for re-investment of any shared savings

Program Areas:

Epidemiology and Surveillance

State Contact Information:

WA
Pama Joyner
Washington State Department of Health
360-236-3589
pama.joyner@doh.wa.gov

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