Commentary
Tech Assets Might Help Make Public Health Data More Equity-Centered
Sep 9, 2021
White Papers to Inform Commission
Published in: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website (2021)
Posted on RAND.org on October 20, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the gaps in our public health and health data infrastructure and illuminated the many ways in which they perpetuate vast health inequities. To work toward a modernized health data system, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) established a first-of-its-kind National Commission to Transform Public Health Data Systems to reimagine how data are collected, shared, and used, and identify the investments needed to improve health equity. RWJF commissioned the RAND Corporation to produce a series of white papers that anchored this process by describing the current landscape, emerging innovations, and the opportunities for transforming and transitioning to a new public health data system. The papers were informed by an environmental literature scan, review of reports on public health data transformation, and stakeholder interviews. In addition, the papers included insights from 20 organizations that received RWJF grants for innovative work related to data equity and data systems integration.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.