Modernized Anti-Racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice is a grant opportunity that seeks to accelerate the development of health-focused local data ecosystems that center principles of anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power.
Through MADE for Health Justice, non-profit organizations will be funded to build and facilitate multisector teams tasked with creating local data ecosystems. These ecosystems must focus on improving community health, connecting data across multiple sectors of local government, prioritizing the needs and voices of communities oppressed by structural racism, and ultimately driving just and equity-centered decisionmaking.
Community Health, Structural Racism, and Data
Data are powerful tools that can be used to measure and address multiple dimensions of community health. Unfortunately, the data systems that are used to track drivers of community health are largely rooted in racist systems and assumptions. Without critical input from the communities these data systems impact and reflect, at best these systems create a distorted view of a community’s health and well-being. At worst, data are used to fuel narratives, policies, and decisions that perpetuate structural racism and the community health inequities it creates.
Anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power must be at the center of any effort to transform and modernize local data systems – including what they measure, how they operate, and whom they benefit. To realize their full potential, local data systems must be restructured to become ecosystems interconnected generators of information that ultimately dismantle structural racism. These ecosystems must be developed to enhance health community-wide, connected across multiple sectors of government and accountable to the communities they serve and reflect. This transformation is essential to drive just decision-making and make progress toward achieving health equity.
MADE for Health Justice
MADE for Health Justice will support up to five non-profit organizations to build and facilitate a team tasked with developing a multisector, interconnected, and health-focused local data ecosystem that centers anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power.
A grant of up to $1,000,000 will be awarded to each organization to support planning, implementation, and sustainability related to the initiative over a three-year period.
Transforming Public Health Data Systems
Inspired by the National Commission to Transform Public Health Data Systems established by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), MADE for Health Justice is supported through a partnership between RWJF and the de Beaumont Foundation. It is part of a multi-faceted effort to create a more equitable national public health data infrastructure. Direction and technical assistance coordination are provided by the national coordinating office, led by the de Beaumont Foundation.
Support for this initiative was provided in part by RWJF. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of RWJF.