Massive Data Institute Receives $4 Million Grant to Improve Data Access for Health Equity Research
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), professor Amy O’Hara , Ph.D., of the Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy will spend three years streamlining data access to accelerate health equity research. The $4 million grant builds upon O’Hara’s existing work on improving researchers’ access to secure data, focusing on restricted government data sources accessible through the Georgetown University Research Data Center (GURDC) .
GURDC is one of 32 secure labs across the country allowing approved researchers to access non-public data, including survey data from numerous federal agencies, alongside federal, state, local, and tribal records from administrative sources. O’Hara notes, “These data contain valuable Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) indicators that are useful for health equity studies and place-based research, but there is low awareness of the labs and types of data available.” She adds that “using these data can be challenging because there may be limited documentation and few data quality assessments available for researchers new to the labs.”
This grant will address these data access and use issues by recruiting and training analysts with diverse backgrounds and lived experience to apply innovative methods to assess data quality and bias in administrative and linked data. The grant also builds the capacity to use these complex data sources by selecting and supporting three demonstration projects that show the value of administrative data for health equity research. “We are seeking to bring diverse groups to the lab so their perspective on which questions to ask and answer can shape a broad health equity research agenda,” says O’Hara.
“We are seeking to bring diverse groups to the lab so their perspective on which questions to ask and answer can shape a broad health equity research agenda,”
Professor Amy O’Hara
Health equity research, which seeks to understand how social factors and structures contribute to health inequities, is vital to identifying solutions to improve health for everyone. By increasing researchers’ familiarity and use of administrative data, O’Hara hopes to unlock new insights that can lead to policies and programs that create thriving communities.
She intends to support projects that strengthen confidence that administrative data contain strong SDOH signals that can enhance health equity research. O’Hara notes that such studies must address additional complexities involving linkage accuracy, bias, and privacy concerns from bringing together multiple sources of information about the same individuals. An overarching objective for the project is to increase awareness and outreach about using blended data within the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) system.
About the McCourt School and MDI
As a top-ranked public policy school located in Washington, DC, the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy teaches students to design, analyze and put effective policies into practice in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. From the center of the policy world, the McCourt School connects with other leading institutions and organizations to tackle society’s most complex challenges — finding solutions that turn policy into impact.
Within the McCourt School, the Massive Data Institute uses modern data and computing techniques to produce cutting-edge social science, computer science, and data science research to improve public policy decision-making.
O’Hara’s team within the Massive Data Institute was established in 2018, with faculty and researchers focusing on data governance, linkage, and privacy. The team’s mission is to empower governments and non-profit organizations to maximize the use of data with secure, standardized solutions for data integration and analytics. Their projects have generated training, tools, and publications to guide secure and responsible data use in federal, state, and local governments and non-profit organizations.
About O’Hara
O’Hara leads sponsored research to improve data discovery and access, develop methods to conduct accurate linkages and protect privacy for data subjects and vulnerable populations. As a research professor in the Massive Data Institute and executive director of the Georgetown University Research Data Center, she has collaborated with numerous federal, state, local, and non-profit organizations to inform their data linkage and analytics plans. As principal investigator, she has current grants developing privacy-enhancing technologies with state and federal agency partners. The new RWJF award supports O’Hara’s continued leadership in the field, allowing her to train a new generation of administrative data analysts and produce tools and methods to understand the opportunities and risks of using administrative data as place-based and SDOH indicators in health equity research.