MADE for Health Justice

About MADE for Health Justice

Modernized Anti-racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice partners with communities who are creating, using, and governing civic data on their own terms to advance health equity and more just decision making.

Advancing community health for all requires us to reimagine the systems that drive health. Civic data — a diverse range of data that captures the realities of life and well-being — is a powerful tool that is used by elected officials, agency leaders, and advocacy organizations to decide what policies are made, how communities are governed, and where resources are invested. These data reflect information related to our home values, traffic patterns, employment history, educational attainment, and much more. Population surveys, administrative records, maps, stories, and oral histories are all forms of civic data that can be used to make decisions that affect our community health.

Better Data for Better Health

Data used to make decisions on behalf of communities has long been ingrained in racist systems that perpetuate inequities. To drive more just policies, governance, and resource investments, civic data must accurately reflect the communities it represents — especially those who have been marginalized and oppressed. This means changing how data is generated and governed, and redefining who interprets and uses it.

With support from MADE for Health Justice, community members and local organizations are co-creating local data ecosystems that reflect their lived realities, needs, and desires. These ecosystems, which involve interconnections amongeople, processes, organizations, and civic data sources, generate information to help communities understand barriers to health and well-being and actions they can take to address them.

Together, community members and residents, power-building organizations, local government agencies, advocates, and community coalitions are generating and using better data to:

• Improve community health
• Center the needs and voices of communities that have been oppressed by structural racism
• Drive more equitable and just decision making

Learn how civic data can be reimagined to drive more equitable and just decision making and improve community health in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) series, “Transforming Data for Equity and Justice.”

Core Values

MADE for Health Justice is driven by five core values:

• Aspire toward trustworthiness and transparency
• Value leadership grounded in lived experience
• Prioritize co-creation with communities
• Focus on learning rather than outcomes
• Center equity and justice

MADE for Health Justice is a partnership between the de Beaumont Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For more information, email [email protected].

Meet the MADE Communities