Celebrating DASH and Its Impact
DASH, or Data Across Sectors for Health, has been a transformational journey for its program office staff as well as for its awardees. While it is winding down as a standalone initiative, it will live on in shared learnings and the mindset changes it cultivated.
After nearly ten years of supporting hundreds of multisector data-sharing projects around the country through funding, technical assistance, and networking support, the DASH initiative is winding down. DASH, or Data Across Sectors for Health, is co-led by the Illinois Public Health Institute (IPHI) and the Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI) and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
When DASH began in 2016, the notion of organizations sharing data about health and health-related social needs in order to better serve their clients, patients, and communities was fairly novel. In its early funding programs, DASH focused on helping to cultivate the basics of data sharing: compatible technology and infrastructure, shared language, and privacy and security matters. Over time, multisector data sharing became more widespread, and DASH programs were able to expand their focus beyond interoperability to matters of communication, community power, and systems change.
The most recent phase of DASH coincided with a time of expanding technology, COVID and its aftermath, and dramatic shifts in societal conventions, all of which has laid bare the extent to which the United States has disregarded the health and wellbeing of marginalized populations.
DASH programs have met the moment in their support for collaborations, applying asset framing to working with and for communities, approaching the data cycle as an opportunity to ensure equitable representation and rectify past and recent harms, and seeking the authentic input of community members as program advisors, leaders, and staff. DASH helped co-lead the way, with peers, mentors, and awardees, in conceiving of data not as a commodity but instead as a tool for community empowerment.
Thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and our incredible program officer there, Hilary Heishman, the DASH initiative was able to foster national peer learning networks and iterate many different local initiative support programs, totaling almost ten years of continuous multisector data-sharing work. This has been a precious gift, because, well, this work takes time. Listening takes time. Learning takes time. Trust takes time. Healthy change takes time. Lasting impact takes time.
As we have learned and grown with our partners, DASH's program development has evolved to better support a diverse array of participants in terms of geography, demographics, and mission. Our assumptions and approaches around grantmaking have also changed over the years to accommodate and amplify lessons as we learned them: we hope we have been part of an evolution in philanthropy where organizations are increasingly empowered to state their needs for impact and are included in grant-related decisions.
The wealth of programs and learnings from DASH and beyond can be found in the DASH Knowledge Base, or DKB. Please head over there, browse around, and enjoy accessing the resources we've been able to gather over the years. Something we're especially proud of is our soon-to-come legal library collection, an up-to-date collection of 171 resources related to the legal ins and outs of data sharing. Many thanks to the Network for Public Health Law for this amazing collection.
Beyond the DKB, the two program offices have each developed plans integrating DASH learnings into their unique modes of operation and areas of influence. Please stop by IPHI or MPHI’s Center for Precision Public Health on LinkedIn any time! We are looking forward to continuing this worthy and substantial work, and to staying in touch with our partners, peers, and participants.