The Robert Wood Johnson and de Beaumont foundations have announced a $5 million partnership to create data ecosystems centering health equity and racial justice.

The Modernized Anti-Racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice, a partnership between the two foundations, awarded three-year grants to communities in Arizona, Maryland, Oregon, and Pennsylvania to pursue data-driven initiatives that advance racial justice and health equity. The initiative aims to accelerate the development of health-focused local data ecosystems that center principles of anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power.

The funded initiatives include the Baltimore City Youth Data Hub; the Community Data for Health and Environmental Justice in Portland and Multnomah County, Oregon; Data Justice for Pittsburgh’s Black Neighborhoods; and Promoting Indigenous Models of Assessment (PIMA) in Tucson and Pima County, Arizona.

“Data are a powerful force that drives our health, whether we realize it or not,” said Jamila Porter, principal investigator for MADE for Health Justice and chief of staff at the de Beaumont Foundation. “To ensure data are a force for good, we need to create data ecosystems—dynamic collections of information that center and uplift the needs of the most marginalized. We’re excited to partner with communities across the nation that have taken on this challenge.”

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