Data Accessibility Committee

Academic Co-Lead: Bob Gradeck, MCP, Director of Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research

Academic Co-Lead: Liz Monk, MS, Director of Community Engagement and Special Projects, Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research

Academic Co-Lead: Steven Saylor, Director of Technology Services, Programmer, Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research

Community Co-Lead: Jamil Bey, PhD, CEO UrbanKind Institute

The Data Accessibility Committee works to make community data and information available and accessible to entire community. Thanks to the team at Western Pennsylvania’s Regional Data Center (WPRDC), our region is fortunate to have open use of the interactive tool they’ve created for sharing community statistics with the public. The shared technological and legal infrastructure to support research, analysis, decision making, and community engagement is central to our work.

Within TPS  research, our committee serves in the vital role of a data intermediary, helping to coordinate administrative data requests across the different TPS cohorts through a regional open data infrastructure. While we work across all TPS research, our support for the THRIVE Study is integral to connecting participant data throughout their childhood and correlating it with existing data sets to produce novel insights on health, environments, and inequities. Learn more about THRIVE here.

Data literacy is at the heart of our efforts, and we’re focused on developing data literacy support and education through training, workshops, technical assistance, and capacity-building activities for TPS community partners and youth. Design is underway for a TPS pilot program for Youth Data Literacy. This three-session program will work with area high schools to review basic concepts for understanding and interpreting data, introduce research result from the Healthy Allegheny Teens Survey, and share their experiences through an engagement studio.