When trying to assess where resources are needed in North Texas, community organizations often look at a variety of data sets and have their own language around the social barriers to well-being in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It can make collaboration between nonprofits, the public sector and businesses tricky.
The Data Capacity Building Initiative by United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation allows partnering groups to visualize community vulnerability by block groups across 26 clinical and socioeconomic indicators with the goal of leveraging that data to drive more impact in advancing racial equity across Dallas, Rockwall, Collin and southern Denton counties.
Block groups can span from 600 people to 3,000 within one ZIP code. It provides a more granular look at social determinants of health like a community’s average income and education attainment, said Lance Rather, senior director of product and strategic partnerships at PPCI. It provides a more comprehensive look at a neighborhood’s condition, he said.
“If we prioritize at the ZIP code level like we’ve traditionally done … then we overlook some of the population that is very vulnerable in our community that may not fall into those ZIP codes,” Rather said at an Aspire United 2030 Annual Investors Meeting Wednesday. “We’re overlooking 100,000 people just in Dallas County.”
United Way hopes the shared hyperlocal data can inform investments and accelerate progress in education, income and health across North Texas. They plan to partner with more than 200 community organizations in the next five years.
Since 2018, United Way has been working on their Aspire United 2030 initiative. It focuses on increasing the share of third-grade students reading on grade level by 50% and growing the number of young adults earning a living wage by 20%, adding nearly $800 million in wages across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
It also strives to increase the number of people with access to affordable healthcare coverage to 96%.
The nonprofit said that these interconnected factors are key predictors of high school graduation and future earning potential, as well as foundational to creating opportunities for successful and fulfilling lives.
Despite Texas’ exceptional economic growth, the state still lags in other measures, said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Texas remains the worst in the nation when it comes to its share of uninsured people and the state’s poverty rate exceeds the national average.
Some 16% of adults across the state are not covered by health insurance, Orrenius reported, or twice the national average for those uninsured. And 12% of families fall below the poverty line.
So while the state celebrates its leading job growth, population growth and housing appreciation, those economic gains can also be disruptive to people as they struggle with issues like affordability and for building infrastructure like schools and roads to maintain pace with people moving to Texas, Orrenius said.
“Keeping up with growth also means keeping up with a lot of changing needs,” Orrenius said. “The only way you’re going to keep up with the Texas economy and the needs of our Texas residents and Texas families is to have that data.”
United Way and PCCI began tracking education, income and health in 2021 by creating an interactive tool, the Community Vulnerability Compass, that visualizes the complexities of social barriers to well-being in North Texas. It’s used by state health agencies, public hospitals, teaching hospitals and philanthropy groups and is not available to the public.
One of the tool’s biggest benefits is creating a shared language among everyone from entrepreneurs to community partners by introducing a universal dataset.
“We can actually bring about a much more impactful change than working in silos,” Rather said.
The goal of the Data Capacity Building Initiative is to strengthen community organizations’ ability to use data to prioritize needs and refine services to improve their operations and anticipate community needs, said Jennifer Sampson, CEO of United Way.
“Data is our compass. It’s our North Star,” Sampson said. “It’s guiding us from good intentions to measurable impact.”
