Virginia Accountable Health Engagement and Action Dashboard: Community Framing of Health Data to Support Clinical Translational Science

Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA

Investigators

Abstract

Disease burden, healthcare delivery, health outcomes, and life expectancy differ strikingly across US populations and communities. To set priorities and focus research where needed, translational science teams and communities need to co-create data systems that allow them to identify different health outcomes—positive and negative—and potential underlying causes; track trends, including the impact of their work; and collaborate to develop priorities and solutions. The Wright Regional CCTS is a national leader at developing census tract measures to inform research, training, care, and policy. Our CTSA hub has developed the HealthLandscape Virginia geospatial and analytic data warehouse with novel community-level metrics for every community in Virginia that span workforce, clinical care, community characteristics, social and economic factors, and health outcomes. We have used HealthLandscape and a novel bright spot and community asset mapping analysis, a blend of advanced analytics and community engagement, to identify communities that do better or worse than predicted for opioid overdose deaths and potential causal factors. This approach needs to be expanded to a wider range of health topics. Building on existing data, analytics, strengths in community engagement, and HLVA platform, we propose to develop the Virginia Accountable Health Engagement and Action Dashboard (Va-AHEAD). Our work will occur in four phases: (1) prioritize and co-create with the community new health topics and measures, (2) identify bright spot communities that do better than expected and factors that may contribute to their success, (3) develop shared meaning, products, and action from the data, and (4) disseminate and support use for improving health. To develop content, we will use unique person-level data (All-Payer Claims Database, state mortality data) for every person in Virginia, community-level data sources, and authentic community engagement grounded in community-based participatory research and guided by our bright spot and community asset mapping approach. Content will be configured in Va-AHEAD. For each health topic, one of seven existing community advisory boards will support content development and usability design of content. We will form a new Health Research Opportunity lab, a learning community to support use of the dashboard and products. Milestones to demonstrate success include: (1) engage community partners to prioritize and coproduce content, (2) calculate new health measures, (3) identify bright and cold spot communities and their health solutions and needs, (4) engage researchers, learners, care team members, and policymakers to use the dashboard, and (5) longitudinally track Va-AHEAD use and impact on translational science and health outcomes. These efforts will address a longstanding translational science need—new data and analytics for health outcomes research determined by the communities that need assistance. The lessons and infrastructure emanating from this project will produce a sustainable model that is scalable across the CTSA consortium.