HHS invests in strategies to improve data collection, use, and evaluation, to increase evidence-based knowledge that leads to better health outcomes, reduced health disparities, and improved social well-being, equity, and economic resilience. HHS is establishing a Department-wide approach to improve data collection, close data gaps, transform data, and sharing data for better HHS analysis and evaluation. HHS also fosters collaborations to expand data access and sharing to create more opportunities to use HHS data to increase knowledge of health, public health, and human service outcomes. HHS is on improving data collection and conducting evaluations to understand the drivers for inequities in health outcomes, social well-being, and economic resilience while working to increase capacity and the use of evaluations at HHS to inform evidence-based decision making. Below is a selection of strategies HHS is implementing.
In the context of HHS, this Strategic Plan adopts the definition of underserved populations listed in Executive Order 13985: Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government to refer to “populations sharing a particular characteristic, as well as geographic communities, who have been systematically denied a full opportunity to participate in aspects of economic, social, and civic life”; this definition includes individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality. Individuals may belong to more than one underserved community and face intersecting barriers.
Contributing OpDivs and StaffDivs
ACF, ACL, AHRQ, ASPE, CDC, CMS, FDA, HRSA, IHS, NIH, OASH, OCR, OGA, ONC, and SAMHSA work to achieve this objective.
Strategies
Establish a Department-wide approach to improve data collection, close data gaps, transform data, and share data for better HHS analysis and evaluation
- Fully implement Section 4302 of the Affordable Care Act to ensure that all HHS national data collection efforts and surveys collect information germane to social determinants of health, including data on race, ethnicity, primary language, disability status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy.
- Identify and address data gaps, including surveillance systems, surveys, and other data collection methodologies, that limit the ability to fully examine and assess social determinants of health, outcomes, and conditions of populations served by the Department’s health, public health or human services programs or services.
- Design common data elements and taxonomies across the Department to consistently categorize data and information, improve data integrity, and ensure trust in data.
- Invest in and promote intra-agency data sharing, including data linkages, interoperability of data, and data harmonization and standardization to leverage data, metrics, and information to improve analysis and evaluation of the Department programs.
- Broaden the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive modeling, and other new technologies to harness the power of integrated data that can lead to improved health, public health, and human service outcomes.
- Encourage data sharing across the Department to support the research and development of artificial intelligence solutions that can lead to improved public health outcomes.
Foster collaborations to broadly expand data access and sharing to create more opportunities to use HHS data to increase knowledge of health, public health, and human service outcomes
- Increase data interoperability between federal partners, states, tribes and territorial partners, non-profit organizations, and health information exchange networks to facilitate shared understanding, application, and utility.
- Expand data sharing with state and local health departments, healthcare provider groups, clinical and patient care agencies, consortia developing regional health information exchanges, safety net providers, and other community-based organizations.
- Facilitate data sharing and access to HHS publicly available data by developing public facing platforms and repositories, and to maximize their value ensure they are easy to find, user-friendly, and in machine- readable format.
- Partner with academic research institutes to catalogue and provide access to the Department's data inventory that matches what researchers need to investigate health inequity across communities and the policy impacts on those inequities.
- Foster U.S. and international collaborations to broadly expand data access and sharing to create more opportunities to use HHS data to increase knowledge of health, public health, and human service outcomes.
- Develop a nationally representative all payer claims database that can be used by providers, consumers, researchers, and policymakers to develop new evidence on the impact of specific types of care on access to care, quality of care and the costs of care for different population subgroups.
- Collaborate and coordinate across HHS Divisions and with other federal departments, states, tribal health facilities, Urban Indian Organizations, and others to improve American Indian/Alaska Native healthcare and status data collection to identify and share best practices to enhance the quality and quantity of American Indian/Alaska Native federal health information system data, including the expansion of social well-being, equity, economic resilience, and population comparison data.
Improve data collection and conduct evaluations to understand the drivers for inequities in health outcomes, social well-being, and economic resilience
- Better engage and include community stakeholders and those with lived experience into the policymaking, program improvement, and research processes.
- Integrate social determinants of health data into surveillance systems, electronic health records, clinical decision supports, and other data collection points to improve knowledge and ensure equitable access to quality care and service delivery.
- Ensure HHS-funded projects and research studies assess disparities in outcomes in the use of health or human services, including social determinants of health and while protecting personally identifiable information.
- Support expanded research in various settings and among federal agencies to establish the evidence base for community and system level social determinants of health interventions to achieve health equity for historically underserved communities.
- Evaluate healthcare utilization, screening, treatment, and survivorship to identify disparities in health outcomes of individuals belonging to multiple underserved groups to inform program improvement and policy development.
Strengthen capacity and the use of evaluations at HHS to inform evidence-based decision making
- Engage in a systematic approach towards building capacity for evaluation and related analyses to ensure the Department is supporting programs that effectively improve the health and well-being of those it serves.
