The Yale School of Public Health’s PopHIVE health data platform will boost its ability to protect and modernize community health data thanks to a $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The new funding will help PopHIVE build out new dashboards and data sets for topics such as maternal health, injuries and overdoses, and youth wellbeing. It will also support new collaborations, including with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO).
“We’re delighted to have the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s support for PopHIVE’s mission to democratize access to population health data,” said Dr. Megan L. Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). “It will significantly advance PopHIVE’s efforts to integrate public and private health data sources for a variety of health conditions. I’m particularly excited about how this data can help reduce data deficits for community leaders across the country.”
These contributions build on previous philanthropic and grant support from the Common Health Coalition, Kaiser Permanente, the de Beaumont Foundation and other sources. They boost Yale’s mission to keep the platform free and accessible for all. Contributions to PopHIVE help it addressthe inherent challenge of a fragmented and often inaccessible public health data ecosystem, centralizing diverse, de-identified datasets into one central and clear visualization hub to serve communities, journalists, practitioners, and policymakers to make our collective communities healthier.
“The Protecting & Modernizing Community Health Data project will help synthesize fragmented and hard-to-access data sources and bring them to community health professionals and residents through PopHIVE’s dashboards and near real-time visualizations,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
PopHIVE, which launched July 1, has gathered and assembled a number of datasets that have among other things been used to track local outbreaks and to gain new insights into illnesses like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
Dr. Anne Zink, senior fellow at YSPH and co-director of PopHIVE, said the grant will accelerate and expand PopHIVE’s work. “The key to improving health is to ensure people are informed by timely, accurate data. This grant will help by letting us bring a number of new datasets online and greatly broaden who can access them,” Zink said.
“Individuals and communities rely on easy-to-access data and information for so many aspects of everyday life — weather, traffic, and traveling planning. PopHIVE is making population health data available in a similar way. We are thrilled to partner with Yale to continue to advance the utility, accessibility, and value of this important resource,” said Jennifer Layden, senior vice president, population health & innovation, ASTHO.
Dr. Daniel Weinberger, professor of epidemiology (microbial diseases), added that PopHIVE will be bringing data on new disease areas online before the end of the year, including on opioid disorders and injuries.