DASH Data Guide

The data in this guide has been assembled and made available for public use as part of the Allegheny County Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) project. This local DASH project is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of their national initiative aiming to develop, implement, and evaluate multi-sector data sharing projects addressing a range of public health challenges. As part of this collaboration the Allegheny County Health Department has collected social determinants data from multiple sources in an attempt to improve the cardiovascular health of 1.2 million residents in the county. This data available through DASH not only relates to cardiovascular disease, but a wide variety of issues impacting public health, including human services, economic development, healthcare, and transportation. The lead agency for the DASH project, the Allegheny County Health Department and project partners have agreed to share these datasets publicly as open data. Community members and organizations are free use this data in a number of ways, including supporting the development of personal and organizational projects, conducting research, and fundraising.

Beyond making information more available and accessible, The Health Department and project partners are using these datasets to create a predictive model of cardiovascular disease in Allegheny County. The Public Health Dynamics Laboratory from the University of Pittsburgh has developed the Framework for Reconstructing Epidemic Dynamics (FRED) predictive model to predict infectious disease. FRED has now been modified to model chronic disease throughout the county and predict the effectiveness of possible interventions through the DASH project. Intervention plans will then be developed and information disseminated by the project partners, who are part of the larger Health Department advisory coalition comprised of over 75 partner organizations. The Health Department would like to thank all the DASH partners who have provided the majority of the data for this project, contributed technical expertise, given local and industry perspectives, and made the sharing of this data possible.

Indicator Selection Process

The datasets provided in this Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) data guide can provide supporting research to address a range of public health challenges. A dataset added to the DASH data warehouse if it has a potential connection to Cardiovascular Disease (CVD). Cardiovascular disease was chosen as the topic of research for this project because it is the leading cause of death in Allegheny County. This topic was also chosen due to the disparities that persist by race and gender in the County.

Determining what topics and measurements may predict or have a connection to cardiovascular disease was a two step process spanning a six month period from January to July, 2016. The initial list of risk variables was compiled by staff working at Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services and Health Department. These staff relied on research to identify six major contributors to heart disease, which include obesity, physical inactivity, tobacco use, abnormal blood lipid levels, hypertension, and type II diabetes. Staff involved in the selection process used these risk factors to identify candidate datasets, excluding data lacking a proxy for measurement and data that was not accessible or reliable.

When the initial list of desired datasets was created, the DASH project was in the process of holding its first monthly meetings with project stakeholders. At the monthly meetings the candidate datasets and selection justification was presented to the project stakeholders. Their feedback on this information shaped the final selection of measures. The stakeholders led the project team to include data describing several more important factors risk factors such as stress proxy and food security indicators. Once finalized, the Allegheny County Health Department began to collect data appearing in this guide from many different sources.

Partners

Allegheny County Department of Human Services Allegheny County Economic Development UPMC Health Plan Jewish Healthcare Foundation Carnegie Mellon Traffic21 Institute University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health Rand Corporation Gateway Health Plan Inc Highmark Health Allegheny County CountyStat University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research American Heart Association