CTData Awarded Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant

The availability of Covid-19 data can vary by location, demographics, and capacity. A Google search can quickly provide information like the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths at the local, state, and national levels, and also economic numbers like unemployment rates and job loss. But when it comes to understanding how the virus might impact different communities, that information can be harder to find because sometimes it’s not being collected or publicly disseminated. 

Anchored in our mission to help individuals and organizations use data, CTData is excited to announce that we have received a Data for Healthier Communities grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This grant enables us to engage with Hartford-area community-based organizations to conduct collaborative analysis with survey and public secondary data using a racial justice framework. 

The funding will help expand work from a survey assessing Covid-19’s impact, which was developed and implemented by UConn Department of Public Health Sciences (DPHS) through the Community Research Alliance, which CTData is a member of. Having timely data will give organizations a more complete picture of the problem and enhance their ability to effectively respond to issues affected or exacerbated by the pandemic.

“Helping residents, organizations, and agencies make data-informed decisions is central to our mission at CTData,” said Executive Director Michelle Riordan-Nold. “This grant expands our current Covid-19 work and allows us to assist community-based organizations with outreach strategies and services based on identified needs using data.” 

CTData would like to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their generous support in cultivating data capacity and helping us connect organizations with resources to support their existing work. We’re honored to be a recipient and excited to continue fostering partnerships that lead to increased access to data and the skills required to utilize it. 

We’ll be keeping you updated about how this work progresses, so make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow CTData on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.