Anticipate Data Challenges and Opportunities
What does it mean to anticipate data challenges and opportunities, and why is it important?
Data is essential for implementing every component of the Roadmap, including identifying disparities, conducting root cause analyses, designing and implementing care delivery and payment models, tracking progress, and refining health equity efforts—but the following common challenges can undermine your initiative:
- Low quality data
- Unanticipated and time-consuming roadblocks to sharing data across organizations
- Inconsistent and shifting definitions of data meaning within and across organizations
- Underestimating the level of resources and amount of time needed to access and analyze data
- Misalignment on success metrics among stakeholders
Addressing these proactively positions your team to meet its data needs in a timely manner. Build data considerations into your initiative from the start. If your team struggles to measure impact or encounters unexpected data discrepancies, pause and refine your data strategy to stay aligned with your equity goals.
The chart below details the steps as well as the approximate number of meetings for which to plan, however, estimates will vary from team to team.
| Key Activities | Time Estimate: ~ 14+ Hours |
|---|---|
| Identify new and existing sources of data | 2-4 one-hour meetings |
| Partner with stakeholders to collect and interpret data | variable based on previously established relationships |
| Develop plans for review and analysis of data | 4-6 one-hour mtgs |
| Discuss challenges with data | 4-8 one-hour mtgs |
| Revise plans for data review, sharing analysis, and meaning-making based on learnings | 4-6 one-hour mtgs |
How should I anticipate data challenges and opportunities?
Begin with the Anticipate Data Needs and Opportunities presentation, below. It explains the connection between health equity and quality improvement through data and introduces high-level considerations for choosing a health equity focus and applying an intersectional lens. Then, work through the resources that follow.
Resources for Anticipating Data Challenges and Opportunities
Anticipate Data Needs and Opportunities (Presentation)
A foundational presentation connecting health equity to quality improvement, covering how to choose a health equity focus, apply an intersectional lens, partner with community stakeholders to collect and interpret data, and develop concrete data action items and next steps.
Anticipating Data Needs and Opportunities (Tool)
A step-by-step planning tool covering opportunities to strengthen partnerships when collecting and analyzing data, data source identification, assessing data quality, earning buy-in from key stakeholders responsible for data management, data sharing, and data analysis
Consideration for Accessing, Collecting, and Sharing Data (Tool)
Helps your team answer three overarching questions, with an emphasis on accessing, collecting, and sharing data:
- Whose buy-in do you need to sustainably scale-up a successful initiative?
- What data do you need to collect to address all stakeholder interests?
- How will you use that data during various stages of your initiative?
Designing and Implementing Integrated Care and Payment Transformation Initiatives to Advance Health Equity: Lessons Learned from Three Pioneering Health Care Provider and Health Plan Partnerships
Sometimes it is helpful to learn from the experiences of others. This report presents case studies of care and payment transformation models designed and implemented by three pairs of health care provider and health plan partnerships to advance health equity. See page 37 for important lessons that they learned about anticipating data challenges.
Assessing Data Challenges and Opportunities
This resource will help you assess and address the following common data-related challenges:
- Earning and benefitting from timely key stakeholder buy-in
- Initiative sustainability
- Data quality
- Data collection, management and analysis
- Data-related risks of care and payment models
About the Roadmap Goal and Objective Setting Tool
About the Roadmap Goal and Objective Setting Tool
Use the Roadmap Goal and Objective Setting tool to facilitate and document the development, implementation, and evaluation phases of your health equity initiative. It will help your team realize your vision to reduce and eliminate health and healthcare inequities by providing a centralized resource to:
- establish process goals that align with each Roadmap component;
- document task status, identify project champions, and maintain detailed notes;
- monitor progress across multiple Roadmap components simultaneously; and
- promote consistent team communication, accountability, and progress.