Report Publish Date: November 19, 2021
This journal article introduces a special issue of Journal of Urban Health focused on Health Data for New York City, an initiative meant to advance policy-relevant health research in the city while supporting early career public health researchers.
In 2019, New York Academy of Medicine and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene launched Health Data for New York City with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Twenty-one researchers from 14 New York Metro Area academic institutions and 12 researchers from eight health department divisions took part in the program.
The program used a working group model to build public-private collaboration around important health issues in the city, including the health effects of the criminal legal system, a potential ban of menthol cigarettes, maternal health care, and childhood asthma.
Health Data for New York City is a program that aims to advance health equity by boosting the amount of collaborative research produced by investigators from the city’s academic institutions and its health department.
In this article, the authors describe how Health Data for New York City was developed and some of the early research it produced.
“There are an array of initiatives that aim to promote multi-institutional, multi-sectoral collaboration; expand access to available population health data; or provide mentorship for early- and mid-career academic researchers,” the authors write. “We hypothesized that a program that combined these core elements in the context of New York City (NYC), which has a diverse population, large urban health department, and many academic institutions, would provide a unique opportunity to advance actionable health equity-focused research.”
“Actionable policy-relevant research is critical to improving population health and advancing health equity, as research provides an evidence base for the development of effective policies and programs.”
— Michele Calvo and David Siscovick, New York Academy of Medicine; Elizabeth Kelman, L. Hannah Gould, R. Charon Gwynn, Mary Huynh, and Marivel Davila, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; Lisa M. Bates, Columbia University; Francesca Gany, Weill Cornell Medical College
Health Data for New York City provides a model for producing policy-relevant health research in other large cities.
Actionable policy-relevant research is critical to improving population health and advancing health equity, as research provides an evidence base for the development of effective policies and programs. For academic researchers with an interest in addressing the upstream social and structural causes of health inequities, conducting this type of research remains a challenge. To maximize the utility of research findings, academic researchers need to collaborate with researchers with applied public health experience, including government and other stakeholders, but may not have the time and knowledge needed to navigate complex government bureaucracy. To influence policy and program development, academic researchers also must understand the broader, applied context, along with the skills needed to communicate relevant findings to decision-makers.
While large city health departments collect vast amounts of data and make efforts to expand access to those data, there remain real and perceived barriers to the effective and efficient use of these data for maximum policy and programmatic impact [1, 2]. Applied public health researchers within a local health department may have limited access to expertise in advanced analytic methods or familiarity with agency data resources outside of their individual program. Health department employees often do not have adequate time for research, analysis, and writing, although research may be of interest and helpful to elevate careers.
There are an array of initiatives that aim to promote multi-institutional, multi-sectoral collaboration; expand access to available population health data; or provide mentorship for early- and mid-career academic researchers [3, 4]. We hypothesized that a program that combined these core elements in the context of New York City (NYC), which has a diverse population, large urban health department, and many academic institutions, would provide a unique opportunity to advance actionable health equity-focused research.
In this issue of the Journal of Urban Health, we describe the development of Health Data for New York City (HD4NYC), which aims to advance policy-relevant, health equity-focused research by combining multi-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration, access to data, and mentorship. We also describe select initial research products emerging from this new, unique program.
J Urban Health, November 19, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-021-00587-2
This study and report were conducted and created by the following people.
