Community and data go together

I’ve known Dr. Dawnté Early for several years now. As a California resident and former employee of the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, her role as the Chief of Research and Evaluation at the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission has always caught my attention.

Despite our work together and even joint presentations, I learn something new from Dawnté each time I hear her speak and am continually impressed by her clear ability to lay out a true vision of using #data4good.

In addition to our discussion at SAS Global Forum in May, the latest example of this is in the newest episode of the SAS Health Pulse Podcast. My colleague, Greg Horne, interviewed Dawnté in a fairly wide ranging conversation about how behavioral health data can and should be used at a state level.

What particularly stood out to me in this conversation was the clear human-driven vision for impact Dawnté has for the analytics:

• She can dive deep into the technical and methodology needs, but she doesn’t lose sight of the fact that behind all of these numbers are real people and lives.
• I’ve talked in the past about the way outcomes and how we frame them can be unintentionally stigmatizing. She also emphasized the responsibility of research and evaluation staff to use “humanizing, human-centered language in our reports.”
• She also explained the importance of tapping into community meetings to stay consistently in touch with accurate language. (This reminded me of my previous San Bernardino team who just won a National Association of Counties award for including consumers in evaluation planning!)

We can frame all research and data the best possible, but what is it good for? Similar to some of my personal mission, Dawnté explained, “It’s easier to get funding for programs that you show work.” This is a theme in much of her and the OAC’s efforts: Not just using evaluation for the sake of evaluation, but ensuring it has a bigger purpose.

“It’s easier to get funding for programs that you show work.” Dr. Dawnté Early

For Dawnté and me, a primary purpose is in advocating for more prevention and early intervention work. In order to do that, as Dawnté illustrates beautifully in this podcast episode, we need more whole person data to truly tell the story of impact.

Not only that, but one of my favorite parts was where she talks about not just having holistic data, but also more holistic use of data. Her vision is connecting data to policy to the community and back to outcomes. This makes a continuous cycle of improvement and impact.

How have you seen data enhance community? How can data empower humanity?

The Health Pulse, part of the SAS Analytics Exchange podcast series, explores fresh perspectives on digital transformation in health care and life sciences. Subscribe on your favorite podcast channel. New episodes released bi-weekly. Have an idea for a topic or guest speaker? Email the series producers at [email protected].?