Prior to releasing the Data Hub, DCoDPH spoke with community organizations representing Hispanic and African American populations and met with partners to identify best methods to display the data and add context to avoid stigmatizing these populations.
DCoDPH staff regularly attend meetings with community collaboratives and share data. Staff often return with input from the meetings to health department leadership to inform decisions. The Latinx Advocacy Team and Interdisciplinary Network for COVID-19 (LATIN-19) emerged as a formalized working group, and DCoDPH staff began participating in those meetings in April 2020. The African American COVID Task Force (AACT+) has been meeting weekly since June 2020 and health department staff have participated in those meetings since its inception.
After publication of the Data Hub, meetings conducted with community partners often involved a representative from the health department giving a presentation on COVID-19 updates, performing a tutorial of the Data Hub dashboard and leading a discussion eliciting feedback on the utility of the resources available and what improvements were needed to meet the needs of the community. DCoDPH continues to foster collaboration with these organizations and many other community partners including Durham Public Schools, North Carolina Central University, Duke University, El Centro Hispano, Lincoln Community Health Center, Durham Housing Authority and more through open communication, listening to community needs and assisting with or providing COVID-19 related resources.
Through consistent engagement with the AACT+, DCoDPH was able to determine that the weekly data reflection report was too complex for the intended audience. Based on community feedback, DCoDPH developed a weekly infographic to accompany the weekly data reflection report in July 2020. This weekly infographic comprised the same information but was designed using a simpler format that was easier to understand. The weekly infographic was further updated, using feedback from LATIN-19, to document the percentage of cases in the Hispanic community and calculate the percentage of this population who were represented in occupational cases in 2020. Ethnicity data was also added to the weekly infographic, along with the percentage of the Hispanic population represented in the top ten most impacted occupations. Beginning in summer 2021, weekly reflection and infographic was made available on the Data Hub in English and Spanish. Additional revisions to the Data Hub, vaccine dashboard, weekly reflections and infographics have been informed by community partners and collaboratives.
The goals of establishing the DCoDPH COVID-19 data infrastructure are to:
· Create an infrastructure and methodology to be used to monitor trends, drive decision making and equitably apply resources to populations most impacted by COVID-19.
· Collaborate with partners and community members to provide and display accurate data with context that is useful and does not stigmatize population groups.
· Provide and display timely accurate data to the community about COVID-19 cases and vaccinations in their community and Durham County overall.
· Share accurate information about COVID-19 disparities with partners to coordinate resources and efforts.
· Allow filtering of publicly displayed data to view for specific population groups.
Steps to establish the DCoDPH data infrastructure include:
· DCoDPH created an Excel Online COVID-19 line listing to serve as a database for COVID-19 disease surveillance and case management in response to COVID-19 beginning on March 12, 2020.
· The Durham County Department of Public Health, Durham County Emergency Management Services (EMS), Duke University Division of Community Health and DataWorksNC worked together to create and populate the Durham County Coronavirus Data Hub.
· Prior to releasing the dashboard, DCoDPH spoke with community organizations representing Hispanic and African American populations to identify best methods to display the data and add context to avoid stigmatizing this population.
· DCoDPH representatives attended meetings with community members and partners to gain input before the dashboard was published.
· The Durham County Data Hub was hosted by ArcGIS and was established on April 4, 2020 as Durham County Department of Public Health’s primary public-facing dashboard.
· Once the dashboard was published, Zoom calls were held with community partners from LATIN-19, Partnership for a Healthy Durham, Isla-NC, the African American COVID-19 AACT+ and many others.
· Weekly data reflection reports and infographics were posted on the Data Hub every Friday with data from the previous week beginning during summer 2020.
· Health department representatives share data and ask for input/suggestions on an ongoing basis. This feedback is used to make continuous improvements to the Data Hub and vaccine dashboards.
· Data maintenance includes regular backups of the line listing to a SQL database that houses all COVID-19 case information in case a critical error occurs, as well as serves as a redundancy.
· Line listing data validation occurs twice weekly to ensure all Durham County cases are captured and identify duplication and errors to correct.
These new and existing relationships with community partners expanded reach to historically marginalized populations to provide accurate information and support community needs. The inclusion of child-focused materials in the outreach bags delivered to targeted apartment complexes was the result of partner feedback and the COVID-19 case data.
The intent of DCoDPH was to provide reliable data that could be used by elected officials, organizations and the Emergency Operations Center to inform decisions regarding populations of color disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.
DCoDPH’s commitment to maintaining this high-quality level of data during the pandemic to address inequities has allowed the organization to seek multiple methods for displaying and distributing the data; hire a diverse workforce to perform surveillance, education and community outreach; improve access to testing and resources and seek opportunities to obtain additional pandemic response funding. DCoDPH continues to observe the ways in which the COVID-19 disproportionately affects communities of color in Durham. In response, DCoDPH has changed its data processes, increased collaboration with partners and transformed relationships with the community to address and reduce COVID-19 related inequities.