The Pew Charitable Trusts recently released the first in a series of publications intended to take a close look at data sharing practices involving public health. The first issue brief delved into the successes and lessons learned from the development of Massachusetts’ Public Health Data Warehouse, which was created in 2017 and now holds more than 6 billion data records representing Massachusetts residents.

As the Data Workhouse’s website explains, it is a “truly unique public health data analysis tool that links multiple data sets across state and local government to address public health priorities.” 

The major accomplishment of the warehouse has been to bring together previously siloed data sources from different state agencies. The Pew report quotes Dana Bernson, director of the Data Science, Research, and Epidemiology Division in the Office of Population Health, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, as saying, “The driving force behind [the warehouse] was realizing that we had all of these disparate data points telling a piece of the story, but not the whole story together.”

Benefits of the Massachusetts’ approach abound. For example, “cross-sector data from the warehouse was used to identify people at significantly higher risk of opioid-related overdose death and then informed the design and implementation of a program that reduced that population’s mortality by more than half.” 

Another example: “By combining data from the Department of Industrial Accidents and DPH’s Registry of Vital Records and Statistics, public health officials found links between work-related injuries and opioid-related overdose deaths.”

And by examining data from Vital Records and the Center for Health Information and Analysis, “officials determined that individuals with disabilities were at heightened risk of severe maternal morbidity.”

The Pew report goes beyond writing about the history of the Massachusetts warehouse and suggests the following promising practices for all the states that want to follow in Massachusetts footsteps:

1. “Engage executive leadership for support. Provide leadership with a compelling case for what a data sharing system can help to achieve and engage them in promoting the model among legislative partners and working through structural barriers.”

   
   

2. “Show value and build trust quickly. Identify pressing public health concerns that have the attention of departmental and/or state leadership; this can be especially helpful in garnering an executive champion. Focus on areas where the system can prove its value early and use that to generate further interest and build confidence in the work. This is especially helpful for legislators who need to show results in limited time windows.”

   
   

3. “Build flexibility into the data system and its funding. Work to creatively combine funding streams to provide support. Don’t get stuck on building a perfect practice up front; rather, focus on having components in place that can adapt over time as lessons are learned and public health priorities shift, such as flexible data use agreements and data structures.”

   
   

4. “Involve a range of internal and external partners. Focus collaboration on generating buy-in for participation from potential data partners and establishing cross-agency trust. Embrace shared decision-making with IT and legal staff from the onset.”

As this Pew series moves forward, it can be a valuable resource for state and local officials elsewhere to “build and strengthen their data sharing infrastructure to foster more collaboration between health departments, health care providers, social services agencies and other public and private institutions.” As Pew researchers explain, “This better-informed collaboration will support more effective, evidence-based solutions for public health concerns.”

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