Health equity in California must start with health data

This pandemic has amplified long-standing health inequities and exposed a fundamental truth: The information infrastructure of public health systems is severely under-resourced, outdated, and fragmented. Years of federal and state disinvestment have taken their toll on California. I’ve seen it through my decades of public health work in four California counties.  

Health inequities are driven by numerous factors, including employment, housing conditions, food insecurity, lack of transportation, and access to health coverage and care, and we should have a view across all of it. Without accessible and actionable health data, public health cannot monitor and meaningfully understand diseases, predict risks, or develop targeted plans for advancing health justice. Yet too many health departments do not have the basic capacity to collect and store their own data, much less receive outside data about their communities.  

Read the article by Mimi Hall, VP of Public Health Innovation, Manifest MedEx, published in State of Reform.