Our semi-annual newsletter is out! Contact us to be added to the distribution list, and click here to view the newsletter in its original format: conta.cc/2pPL74R
New Report and Data Viewer: Merging 500 Cities and Connecticut Data on Health Equity
DataHaven created a report on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's newly-released 500 Cities estimates on neighborhood-by-neighborhood health and health care conditions.
Our report combines this innovative new source of statistically-modeled data with some of our own neighborhood data gathered directly from live, in-depth interviews with 16,219 randomly-selected Connecticut residents in 2015. The 500 Cities estimates are available only for the eight largest cities in Connecticut, but our Community Wellbeing Survey covers towns statewide. As explained in the report, DataHaven attended the project kick-off in Dallas and is working with national partners to help understand and validate the new data.
View the report, and an accompanying interactive data viewer with neighborhood-level maps of Connecticut, on this page:
http://www.ctdatahaven.org/reports/merging-500-cities-and-connecticut-data-health-equity
Upcoming Programs and Events
Community Wellbeing Survey update and call for partners
- By working with over 100 partner organizations last year, we created new statewide data resources that are not available from any other source. In 2018, with help from our panel of major funders, community advisors, and national and local survey research experts, we will be repeating and expanding this innovative statewide and regional program, allowing us to create new information on statewide and local trends as well as more fine-grained estimates of conditions in neighborhoods throughout Connecticut. Please contact us to find out how you can participate!
Regional Public Outreach and Data Workshops
- DataHaven staff have been busy with outreach activities relating to our new reports and data resources, with DataHaven engaging large audiences at the New York Academy of Medicine (where we were selected to present at the annual Population Health Summit), the Connecticut Public Health Association's 2016 Annual Conference (where we collaborated with five different institutional and academic partners to give a conference session plus present two unique research posters), events organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, Connecticut Council for Philanthropy, Leadership Fairfield County, Yale University, and at various local meetings. In addition, we continue our heavily-used free technical assistance program as well as workshops for non-profits and journalists on using local, state, and federal data for grant writing and advocacy. Contact us to discuss a presentation or a workshop idea.
Fairfield County's Community Foundation events
- Over the past six months, Fairfield County's Community Foundation has organized a number of legislative forums and events in the cities and towns throughout Fairfield County, focusing on highlights from the landmark Fairfield County Community Wellbeing Index 2016. These events continue in April 2017 with a webinar (open to all) and a public event at the Fairfield Public Library. Register for either event here: http://fccfoundation.org/research-publications/community-wellbeing-index-page/
City Transformation Plan
- DataHaven has been selected as part of a consulting team to create new data resources and data viewers to support the City of New Haven's City Transformation Plan. The first version of the plan, published in 2016 with input from hundreds of residents and community leaders, relied on indicators from the Greater New Haven Community Index and several other recent reports produced by DataHaven. Learn more on the City's new website, to be released later this year.
Great Give 2017
- Support our work with a small gift! Please visit https://thegreatgive.org/ and schedule a donation now, or plan to come back during a 36-hour giving event starting at 8:00am on May 2. As a public service organization focusing on civic vitality and social issues, DataHaven is eligible to win new prizes this year.
Order Professionally-Printed Copies of DataHaven Reports
- Would you like a beautifully-printed and bound copy of one our new 80-page reports? The new reports, filled with dozens of full-color infographics and tables, are in very high demand, and after sending out over 1,000 copies to funders and major organizations throughout New Haven and Fairfield County, a limited number are still available. Reports can be ordered at cost. View photos here and write to us for additional information.
If you would like to learn more, please contact us: http://www.ctdatahaven.org/contact
New feature articles, reports, and press coverage about our multi-sector work across Connecticut
We have worked with our partners throughout Connecticut to bring significant coverage to our collaborative work. Here are a few items published since our last semi-annual newsletter in October 2016:
- Cover of New Haven Magazine: Number-Crunching New Haven: 17 Data Points That Point To A Changing City. "DataHaven is an information factory that generates, collects, interprets, and shares data about New Haven - as well as Connecticut and beyond - with fellow nonprofits, government, community organizations, universities and hospitals. Its findings have helped to identify and quantify problems, often spurring government action." http://www.courant.com/new-haven-living/features/hc-nh-data-haven-201611...
- Connecticut Magazine 40 Under 40: Class of 2017. "There's a phrase that's floating around media and policy circles a lot these days: data is the new oil. To be sure, many new ventures in both worlds have based their models on data about the places in which we live. At the front of this trend in Connecticut is New Haven's DataHaven..." http://www.connecticutmag.com/the-connecticut-story/under-class-of/artic...
- DataHaven Staff Editorial: 'Criminalization of poverty:' New data on women in Connecticut jails. "The [new] data allows for a more complicated picture than is told just by headlines of decreasing incarceration rates. Pushing for criminal justice reform does little without a nuanced understanding of the circumstances that put people in jail, keep them there, and push them further into the margins of the criminal justice system." https://ctviewpoints.org/2016/10/25/criminalization-of-poverty-new-data-...
- DataHaven Staff Editorial: Connecticut No. 4 nationally in use of evidence-based policy-making. https://ctviewpoints.org/2017/02/27/ct-no-4-nationally-in-use-of-evidenc...
- New at The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven: Community Progress Report 2016. "Using the latest economic, demographic, educational, health, and well-being data, this report (a condensed, 12-page version of highlights taken from the comprehensive Greater New Haven Community Index 2016) provides benchmarks that identify strengths to build on and challenges that need to be addressed."
- 40 Brilliant Open Data Projects (and how they're redefining smart cities). "DataHaven's mission to collect, interpret, and share open data for better decision-making across Connecticut."
- New Report Challenges Business Community Perception of Connecticut Economy (CT News Junkie). "When residents were asked about their living conditions in the state, their answers don't correspond to perceptions advanced by business advocates," the Center for Public Policy and Social Research report states."
- Connecticut Bets on Arts, Entrepreneurship for Equity (Next City).
- Unemployment rate for youth in cities still too high, experts say (News Times).
- Data in Fairfield County Wellbeing Index surprises some residents (News Times). "If we don't know what's going on, we can't fix it. Getting the data is not easy to do, but it is important to have." Carballo, the development director at Danbury-based Family & Children's Aid, said many of the results came as a surprise, especially the data from Bridgeport and Danbury."
- Report Raises Tough Questions For The Valley (Valley Independent Sentinel).
- Report: Valley towns are growing more diverse (CT Post).
- Higher levels of depression, anxiety found among region's Hispanics (New London).
- Report: Danbury lags behind in quality of life indicators (News Times). "These more sensitive and nuanced measures of well-being include how people are doing on a daily basis, how they function in the world, and how they generally perceive their lives and their communities," writes Mark Abraham, executive director of the New Haven nonprofit DataHaven, in the report's introduction. "Attention to well-being is particularly useful when analyzing perceptions of safety, certain environmental factors, access to community resources, and general optimism about the future."
- What the 2016 presidential election returns reveal about Connecticut voters. "[Using town-level data from the DataHaven Community Wellbeing Survey], one of the stronger correlations for whether someone voted for Trump or Clinton in those towns was how much they felt like they had any influence on local government." https://trendct.org/2016/11/15/what-the-2016-presidential-election-resul...
- A Citywide Health Check-up, Neighborhood by Neighborhood (CT News Junkie). http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/archives/entry/analysis_a_citywide_health_ch...
Visit the front page of our website, or our Twitter and Facebook pages, to see many other recent articles, and to follow along as we release new information!
We send these newsletters a few times per year. We are grateful to our many statewide partners and sponsors for their support.
