Data to Improve Community Conditions Shaped by Structural Racism -- Charleston Community Research to Action Board

The Foundation's Data for Healthy Communities initiative was designed to create the conditions in communities that allow all residents to reach their best possible health and well-being by: (1) strengthening the evidence base for how conditions of place impact health; (2) extending the use of data and evidence throughout the decision-making process, including policy; (3) using data collection and analysis to bring communities closer together by building the capacity of places to use data, develop leaders, and genuinely engage their community; and (4) developing norms, behaviors, and formal rules of interaction related to how data are communicated and used to address problems and initiate change in underserved communities.This grant supports data collection, research, and community engagement to answer key community-driven questions on how race, conditions of place, and health intersect, producing actionable information that can be applied to community-level advocacy, planning, and decision-making. Strategically, this grant will seek to build local capacity to use data to advance health equity, which is a key component of RWJF's Data for Healthier Communities authorization. It is related to a previous and similar call for proposals that posited that fast, small-dose, flexible funding for community-based organizations to work on immediate community need will have a positive and sustained impact on local data capacity. The deliverables will include community training events on survey design, administration, and evaluation; a 'black paper' describing the results, which is a pamphlet that is critical of policy approaches in political decision-making; and a presentation of the evaluation results--part of a project to collect data to understand the public health disparities resulting from air pollution in communities in Charleston County, SC, home of the port city of Charleston.