
Development of the RWJF Health and Medical Care Archive, 2020
This project addresses increasing the capacity of the Health and Medical Care Archive (HMCA) for identifying, collecting, and disseminating data and making more data available for reuse. This proposal outlines a strategy to continue HMCA's work to expand access to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)-funded data and increase the impact of HMCA data by growing the user community engaged with the data. The RWJF funds a wide range of data collections that are valuable to include in HMCA and promote to broad audiences of users. To engage a community of data users who are working to build a culture of health, improve health outcomes, and reduce health inequities, we propose four main project objectives. First, we will enhance the data submission experience and improve the quality of data by continuing to train grantees and provide materials related to data management. Second, we will curate more data efficiently to ensure project resources for curation maximize the benefit to the research community. Third, we will improve the findability of data by enhancing data, documentation, and data-related resources. Fourth, we will expand outreach and training by developing HMCA new communication strategies, including developing a newsletter and utilizing social media. The proposed strategy is to continue existing HMCA infrastructure and processes for the upcoming year, but leverage a new set of activities that can expand the impact of the data in the HMCA archive. One challenge underlying this work is developing clear measures for determining the success of the project. The proposed activities will create additional capacity for ICPSR to work with a broader set of RWJF-funded data collections to improve their use, ensure transparency, and add to the evidence-base on health care and health care policy.
Funding:
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
(77317)
Funding Period: 4/1/2020 to 3/31/2021