Improving Public Health Decision-Making Through Alternative Data Sources

The relationship between the environment and public health is well-established, offering an opportunity for addressing public health issues in fields outside of the public health realm. For example, traffic rerouting can help lower pollution levels and repaving with new types of asphalt can sequester carbon dioxide. While many public officials are interested in addressing issues like asthma, heart disease, and adverse birth outcomes through interventions in the infrastructure, transit, and education spaces, the data necessary to drive these decisions is not always readily available.

The Community Data Health Initiative (CDHI) exists to help bridge this gap. A Data-Smart City Solutions project, CDHI helps cities take on environmental challenges that directly affect people’s health by working with mayors and city teams to turn local data, community insights, and cross-sector partnerships into targeted solutions. These are focused in neighborhoods where residents face the highest risk of poor public health outcomes, often low-income or formerly redlined areas or historically marginalized communities. 

This article, part one of a two-part series, features work done by a team of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students for The Public Innovation Institute (PII), a Harvard-affiliated research initiative. This student team spent a semester researching the challenges in accessing and utilizing public health data in local decision making, focusing on environmentally-impacted respiratory and cardiovascular health. Part one focuses on the challenges with accessing, sharing, and evaluating data, and explores alternative data sources as a supplement. The students compiled a database tool to help local officials find data that links environmental factors to respiratory illnesses and other related health outcomes. 

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