Improving health, well-being, and resiliency of communities
Sharon Kandris
Associate Director
The Polis Center at IUPUI
All organizations desire to make a greater impact on the people and communities they serve. Being data-informed makes that possible. It leads to greater awareness, improved planning, targeted resource allocation and a better case for funding. Sharing data for the greater good is why the Indiana Data Partnership (IDP) exists, and as one of its founding partners, The Polis Center at IUPUI has a vested interest in ensuring its success.
For the past 30 years, The Polis Center has been building the capacity of organizations to solve challenges, reduce barriers and leverage resources by harnessing the power of data. Our mission is to work with our partners to define, measure and actively improve the well-being, health and resiliency of communities; and our success has been built on collaboration and partnerships. The Indiana Data Partnership is the most recent example.
Polis is adding the power of its SAVI Community Information System, one of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive, to the state’s data resources along with other partners such as the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC). This will result in increased public access to actionable information that will change the way that communities partner to achieve greater impact.
The SAVI community information system provides free open access to a wealth of data describing the demographics, social, economic and physical conditions of communities. Polis curates data from dozens of government entities and nonprofits and transforms them in to useful formats that allow people to answer questions about communities such as “where?”
- Where is the greatest need? Where are the communities most impacted by a public health issue? Natural disaster? Economic crisis?
- Where do the people we serve live?
- Where should we target our services?
- Where are the organizations that provide services? Which services?
It also provides information to understand issues of equality, disparities and gaps. These are particularly important questions to answer when a community is working to measure and improve its health and well-being for a very localized area.
An important element of SAVI is an inventory of nonprofit organizations and the health and human service programs they offer. Together, these data allow organizations and government agencies to pinpoint gaps in services for the areas with the greatest need. In the IDP, we are repurposing these data to address the opioid crisis. By understanding the landscape of service providers and actors involved in providing treatment, education, funding, advocacy and policy around this issue; stakeholders and community leaders will be able to more effectively build collaborations and target resources that will lead to a more comprehensive solution.
For the IDP, we are integrating these data with those managed by the Indiana Business Research Center for a more comprehensive inventory of organizations than has ever been realized within the state of Indiana. When combining this inventory with other detailed community-level data from SAVI and outcome data from the state, it opens greater possibilities for information discovery and problem solving.
Through this data partnership, the public will have greater access to data than ever before, increasing their ability to build stronger and more prepared communities and to more quickly recover from disasters of all types – natural, economic and health to name a few. In this phase, we are focusing on the opioid and substance abuse crisis, preparing communities with the knowledge of the resources that can be brought to bear, providing information about potential collaborators, sharing the importance of wrap around services for individuals and families impacted, and engaging stakeholders in conversations about possible solutions.
With all of these data brought together, Polis is excited about making the data actionable and helping stakeholders develop creative solutions to addressing the opioid crisis and other complex challenges around the state. As we expand our resources, this statewide partnership allows us to make a bigger impact as well.