Three resident-driven documentary films focusing on Hartford, New Haven, and the Lower Naugatuck Valley area of Connecticut were produced by Purple States and DataHaven, and released in January 2021. The films reveal stark differences in life expectancy between neighborhoods and highlight issues such as the opioid crisis, access to healthy food, and heart disease.
Videos and films can be viewed and shared on DataHaven’s YouTube Channel (click here to access), as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
The project is part of Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives, a $2 million grant initiative that supports 10 projects across the US, leveraging United States Small-Area Life Expectancy Estimates Project (USALEEP) data to explore how communities can address health disparities and ensure everyone has a fair and just opportunity for a long life.
DataHaven and Purple States are integrating community organizing with data analysis and resident-driven storytelling to advocate for investment in strategies that community knowledge and data suggest will reduce health inequities. The project's goal is to produce distilled, graphically clear, action-oriented data analysis informed by community processes, as well as multiple short-form documentary videos that integrate personal stories to bring implications of small-area health data to life. This project gives residents a chance to further document and showcase the health inequities they experience by sharing their stories through video storytelling.
By combining USALEEP data on life expectancy with administrative data, surveys, and residents' insights and stories, communities can identify and convey local variations in health-related factors and empower multisector interventions. This project's analysis will demonstrate to data-holders at the state and local levels the value of small-area data like USALEEP for local empowerment and strategic interventions—and how releasing additional datasets at the neighborhood level could greatly enhance the power of analyses.
For more information, please contact Mark Abraham, Executive Director, DataHaven, info [at] ctdatahaven.org.
About DataHaven
DataHaven is a New Haven-based non-profit organization with a 25-year history of public service to Connecticut communities. Its mission is to empower people to create thriving communities by collecting and ensuring access to data on well-being, equity, and quality of life. Learn more at ctdatahaven.org.
