Measuring health outcomes: Philanthropy as catalyst

To what degree does a newly rehabbed apartment help decrease emergency room visits for an asthmatic child?
What are the barriers to improving community residents’ access to healthy foods?
How do neighborhood amenities and safety factors influence a family’s outdoor activities?
The answers to questions like these are increasingly sought-after by grantmakers and community-based service providers working to advance health equity and address the critical health needs in their communities. As projects and cross-sector partnerships that integrate affordable housing, community development, and health begin to scale, documenting the associated health outcomes is essential to gain an understanding of how these efforts address the key social determinants of health and to build the body of evidence needed to tailor interventions in communities.
The paradigm shift that has brought recognition of the social determinants of health to the forefront for grantmakers, health care institutions, and community development has been an important step toward improving community health and health equity. However, it is only the first step. With that recognition needs to come the corresponding investment that allows nonprofits and community benefit programs on the frontlines to measure the impact of their work on health outcomes. Clinical data or other large data sets that might be provided by partner health care institutions do not always answer the critical questions posed by community-based programs. New data initiatives, notably the 500 Cities Project, Community Commons, Opportunity 360, and the data platform within the 100 Million Healthier Lives Project, have the potential to help communities understand key health and related equity indicators. However, these data sets cannot substitute for the direct primary program-level data that are the foundation to understanding short- and mid-term changes in health attitudes, behaviors, and practices influenced by upstream interventions, and how investments in community-based initiatives are affecting the social determinants of health and the lives of people in vulnerable communities. (author introduction) #P4HEwebinarOctober2023