Health Foundation Study Highlights Accessibility and Quality of State’s Community Health Data

NEW BRITAIN (Nov. 11, 2008) - A study by the Connecticut Health Foundation (CT Health) concludes that lack of a comprehensive, web-based community health data tool limits state decision-makers’ ability to plan and respond to public health issues, such as why high-cost emergency room use is greater in some types of Connecticut communities.  The study revealed what many have expressed, that pubic health issues can be identified early with an accessible, customer-friendly, web-based health data tool. 

CT Health commissioned the study to examine the health data problem and identify solutions.  Two recent publications provide highlights of the study:

• Improving Connecticut Community Health Data, a CT Health policy brief, summarizes the study that looks at the state’s current health data systems, lessons learned and strategies for improvement.
• Community Health Data:  Benefits and Costs, a quarterly newsletter, offers an example of a New London County community’s health data assessment, which identified five priority health issues, leading to specific recommendations and actions.

“Consequences of not having easy-to-use, quality, unified data cost everyone -- policy- and decision-makers, business and communities’ -- in time, resources and, unfortunately, poor health outcomes in some communities,” says Lorenz Finision, research consultant for CT Health and principal with SigmaWorks Consulting in Boston.  

Highlights of policy brief:  Improving Connecticut Community Health Data

• Findings and recommendations from the study are based on a literature review of community health data organizations and foundations, comparing Connecticut’s online health data to eight other benchmark states, focus groups representing diverse groups and one-on-one interviews.
• Community health data are collected by many state agencies, but are not readily accessible in a customer/user-friendly format common to all.
• Collaboration among state government, business, private funders and community groups is needed to make health data more available and useful to community data users.
• A strategy for improvement includes a three-tiered approach, which begins with basic data displays; improvements, such as report cards; and enhanced data displays, such as a priority-setting system.

Highlights of the newsletter: Community Health Data:  Benefits and Costs

• “The link between health and non-health data becomes even clearer with the realization that communities are related, not isolated,” according to Milford Health Director Dennis McBride, M.D., MPH.  For example, data on environmental factors, such as community safety, need to be linked to health data when offering walking as a solution to obesity. 
• There is growing interest nationally for web-based data resources since the Institute of Medicine’s 1988 report on The Future of Public Health, which emphasized assessment as one of three core public health functions.
• The Missouri Information for Community Assessment interactive web-based tool’s success can be attributed to senior management-level and cross-agency collaboration.

For more information about CT Health, contact Maryland Grier, communications officer at 860.224.2200, ext. 32; or to learn more about CT Health’s Data Scan website, visit http://data.cthealth.org/ or contact Midge Mongillo, administrative assistant at Midge@cthealth.org or 860.224.2200, ext. 33.   

About the Connecticut Health Foundation (CT Health) – www.cthealth.org:  the state’s largest independent, nonprofit grant-making foundation dedicated to improving the health of the people of Connecticut through systemic change, program innovation and health policy analysis. Since it was established in July 1999, CT Health has awarded 448 grants in 44 cities and towns, totaling $37 million in three priority areas – children’s mental health, reducing racial and ethnic health disparities, and oral health.