WHA is excited to announce that it has been selected as a recipient of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Community-Led Seed Grant, along with funding from the Greater Watertown Community Health Foundation to support the Integrity for Data Equity and Accuracy (IDEA) Initiative.
IDEA aims to improve demographic data accuracy in health care settings by providing training and IT infrastructure support for the detailed collection of race, ethnicity and language data. Through these efforts, WHA will establish a solid foundation for accurate, comprehensive demographic data collection that will help identify disparities, design targeted interventions, track outcomes and enhance our understanding of patient needs, ensuring tailored health care solutions that address disparities and improve patient care delivery. This initiative will be carried out in collaboration with Fort HealthCare, Marshfield Medical Center-Beaver Dam and Watertown Regional Medical Center.
Enhancing race and ethnicity data collection in Wisconsin
The WHA Information Center (WHAIC) and WHA are collaborating with the Wisconsin Division of Public Health (DPH) on a project focused on updating and standardizing guidelines for the collection of race and ethnicity data. Key objectives include developing training tools for hospitals based on the newly updated federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines, as well as incorporating a more inclusive set of identities to support self-identification. This initiative will improve the accuracy, completeness and comparability of data across systems, ensuring legal compliance, enhancing interoperability and empowering hospitals and health systems to design more targeted interventions to address health disparities across the state.