Across the country, health departments are using the Big Cities Health Inventory data platform to drive strategies and decision-making to improve the health of residents in their cities.
Through a dynamic partnership with the Big Cities Health Coalition (BCHC), the Drexel Urban Health Collaborative (UHC) designs, manages and updates BigCitiesHealthData.org. The platform currently includes visualizations and downloadable data for over 125 metrics for the 36 member cities of the BCHC.
At a recent webinar planned by UHC and co-hosted by the UHC and BCHC, public health leaders from Denver, Houston and Cleveland shared how they’re turning the data platform into a powerful tool to support community health assessments, strategic planning, dashboards, policy development, and collaboration with peer cities. Across all three presentations, speakers emphasized that the platform provides accessible city-level indicators, documentation, downloadable data, and city-to-city comparisons that help inform local public health policy, practice and decision making.
"I leverage data from the BCHC data platform in my everyday policy and advocacy work focused on health equity,” said Michelle Wilcox MPH, HPM, Policy Analyst at the Cleveland Department of Public Health. “We cannot influence policy, strengthen infrastructure, or shift programs without solid, readily available data, and the platform gives us city-level data that is otherwise difficult to access."
Tolu Olumuyiwa MPH, CQIA, Epidemiology Manager at the Houston Health Department, described using the data for many purposes, including for the department’s community health assessment reports, when writing grant problem statements and when drafting Houston's strategic plan for improving maternal and child health. “By using the data platform, we were able to compare Houston with similar cities across many maternal and child health metrics. We then reached out to those health departments to discuss ways to respond to the data trends -- so the data platform is also helping us strengthen our relationships with other health departments."
Participants appreciated that – compared to other data platforms – BCHC’s data platform includes many more metrics that are critical to health in cities and are updated annually. “The data visualizations and technical documentation —which includes why each indicator was selected — helped us decide which indicators belonged in our public-facing dashboard.” explained Paige Andrews MS, Senior Population Health Epidemiologist at the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment. “The data are downloadable, and API access allows us to automatically update data on our end, reducing manual work and keeping our information current.” added Ryan Curtis MPH, Data Analytics Associate at the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment.
In addition to ease of retrieving data, participants said the platform includes many useful metrics that their department doesn’t routinely compile such as the racial segregation indices; environmental metrics like air pollution, heat waves and disasters; and metrics from the city's point-in-time homelessness count.
For questions about the data platform, contact UHC Data Analyst Saima Niamatullah.
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The Big Cities Health Inventory data platform is primarily supported by Cooperative Agreement Number NU38PW000033 awarded to Big Cities Health Coalition and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.