Article by Alonzo Plough and Joel Gurin: “Data-driven, reality-based health science saves lives. Without it, we could not protect people from disease, cure them when they’re sick, or ensure that the places where they live promote good health. In America today, however, an anti-facts movement is eroding the data needed to protect lives.
Already, the Trump administration has dramatically changed how health data is gathered and reported, removed federal websites and datasets, cut staff and funding for health agencies and health research, and diminished our ability to track traditional health outcomes and social determinants of health. The public health community has lost critical data for tracking flu, COVID, sexually transmitted diseases, women’s and children’s health, and more. Thousands of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services have been let go.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has made protecting America’s essential health data a priority. To that end, the foundation supported an expert roundtable in July hosted by the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and the National Conference on Citizenship. CODE has synthesized the results of that roundtable and extensive additional research in a new report, Ensuring the Future of Essential Health Data for All Americans. The report is a timely and comprehensive summary of the sweeping shifts endangering both the health of Americans and the capacity to measure how everyday conditions — like access to food, safe neighborhoods, and jobs — shape health outcomes. It presents five recommendations and several tactics to protect and improve critical health data…(More)”.
