I was delighted with the opportunity to watch the Roadmap for Democratizing Data for Housing and Homelessness Leveraging COVID-19 Funding session, especially because while I come from a healthcare data background, I have lots to learn as it relates to other forms of social care data. This roadmap seemed like a helpful place to start my education as it relates to leveraging other sources and types of data to improve the health of the communities we serve. I was left with the following key takeaways:

  • Transparency: Lack of transparency leads to confusion, inefficacies, and silos. Moving towards a more transparent data and reporting system requires time, trust, and shared use cases.
  • Privacy: Members of our communities seeking housing services are often times some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Ensuring their information is treated with respect and confidentiality, if not higher standards of privacy, is crucial.
  • Engagement: Complex problems require complex solutions, but often times the missing piece of the equation is creating spaces for multi-partner and multi-sector collaboration. This presentation and roadmap emphasized the need for creating a collaborative group of partners that span sectors, geographies, and populations. Additionally, the roadmap clearly articulated the important reminder that nothing should be built or designed without the authentic participation of people with lived experience and expertise in the topic at hand.

It was not surprising that our colleagues and partners working in the social needs sector are often faced with the same challenges many of us experience in our day-to-day, and points to the opportunities that abound when we open up spaces for collaborative learning, problem-solving, and resource sharing.

Make sure to watch Roadmap for Democratizing Data for Housing and Homelessness Leveraging COVID-19 Funding as part of the On Demand Sessions for the Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit through the conference platform at bit.ly/CDTagenda.

This post was contributed by Emilie (Sites) Wortman, MPH,  Program Manager at Comagine Health.