Solutions in Health Analytics for Rural Equity across the Northwest (SHARE-NW)
SHARE-NW is a collaboration between the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (NWCPHP) and public health agencies at the state and local level across the Northwest that serve rural communities.
SHARE-NW is designed specifically for rural professionals in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state with limited resources and little to no data experience. The goal of SHARE-NW is to increase the availability of, access to, and use of data for rural health agencies in their efforts to identify and understand complex underlying social conditions impacting their communities.
Our collaborative efforts are guided by SHARE-NW’s region-wide Equity Advisory Committee, which includes local and state public health professionals with expertise and experience in health equity and/or data.
All resources on this website are free to use.
Where to Start?
If you aren’t sure where to start, we recommend you begin with health equity trainings. These trainings will help you better understand and articulate health equity, identify health disparities using data, and create presentations using data to communicate with decision makers in your community for addressing health inequities. These tasks and steps can be essential to gathering support for your data-driven decisions and moving your efforts forward within your organization and/or community.
For help on getting started with interpreting data on the dashboards, see our quick start guide.
You can also explore the data dashboards to help you identify a topic or specific issue based on your community’s needs. We hope the data will help guide your focus and be a key aspect of the decision-making. Then, you can search the training resources here for what is most relevant to the issue, or issues, you want to address.
Hearing a Need
Rural communities, as well as communities of color within those rural areas, face barriers that create and/or increase health disparities. Rural public health professionals across the Northwest voiced a need for better access to data that is easy to review and helps identify health inequities issues within the communities they serve and with whom they partner. Data can provide insight for decision making and priority-setting and strengthens requests for funding to support communities.
The SHARE-NW team also heard about the need for training to build capacity to use data more effectively and better support public health efforts in data-driven decision making to address identified health inequities.
We have built the SHARE-NW website along with rural public health staff who will be using the website. Our team spent four years talking to, interviewing, and surveying rural public health staff in the Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington state) about what data they needed, based on a variety of health topics. The health topics on this website are the identified priorities of public health agencies in the region and a result of our collaboration to better support the health of rural communities. Rural public health professionals also provided feedback for the design and information on this website.
Together, the data and training resources here can support public health professionals in making data-driven decisions with communities to improve the health and well-being of individuals and families.
Equity Advisory Committee
From the beginning of this project, we have partnered with public health experts in the Pacific Northwest for their rural public health practice perspective and insight needed to address health equity issues within the communities they serve. The Equity Advisory Committee will continue to collaborate with the SHARE-NW team on improving this project and sharing this website as a resource for public health professionals.
Committee Members
- Jaime Bodden (she/her), MPH, MSW
Washington State Association of Local Public Health Officials - Bridget Canniff (she/her), MALD, CPH
Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (Oregon) - George Conway, MD, MPH
Deschutes County Health Services Department (Oregon) - Lauren Jenks (she/her), MPH, CHES
Washington State Department of Health - Maggie Mann (she/her), BS
Southeastern Idaho Public Health - Lisa McGuire (she/her), MPH
Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health - Tim Noe (he/him), PhD
Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division - Joseph Pollard (he/him), BS
Idaho Department of Health and Welfare - April Rezendes (she/her)
Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health
SHARE-NW Team
The SHARE-NW team is a multidisciplinary team based at the University of Washington.
Leadership
- Team Director: Betty Bekemeier (she/her), PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN
Betty is a professor with the UW School of Nursing, and serves as the director of the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (NWCPHP), overseeing the center’s activities with federal, state, tribal, and local partners. Before becoming the NWCPHP director, Betty led training activities and served as a content reviewer for the center’s nursing trainings, among other duties. She earned her doctorate from the University of Washington and her master’s of public health and master’s of science in nursing from Johns Hopkins University. - Co-Director: Uba Backonja (she/her), PhD, MS, RN
Uba is an assistant professor with the UW School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership. Her research interests include community-based health informatics, data visualization, health inequities, women’s health, and health promotion. She earned her doctorate and master’s of science in nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. - Co-Director: Barbara Baquero (she/her), PhD, MPH
Barbara is a researcher and associate professor with the University of Washington School of Public Health. Her research interests include health equity, racial and ethnic health, and urban and rural disparities. She earned her doctorate in behavioral health and her master’s of public health at San Diego State University. - Co-Director: Beth Heitkemper (she/her), PhD, RN
Beth is a researcher and assistant professor with the University of Texas. She has expertise in creating technology-based decision-support tools that empower individuals to understand large quantities of data through appropriate, user-centered data visuals. She earned her doctorate from Columbia University Irving Medical Center School of Nursing. - Co-Director: Anne Turner (she/her), MD, MPH, MLIS
Anne is a researcher with the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (NWCPHP). She is also a professor in the University of Washington’s School of Public Health and School of Medicine. Anne earned her master’s of public health in medical informatics and master’s of library and information sciences from the University of Washington. She earned her medical degree from Brown University.
Team Members
- Jordan Bethea (she/her), MS
Tableau Specialist for Dashboard Development - Rick Bruch (he/him)
Web and IT Support - Yufei ‘Haley’ Chaing (she/her)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Mirra Chinta (she/her)
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Data Collection and Processing - Thy Chu (she/her), MN, BSN, RN
Graduate Student Researcher - Jay L. Cunningham (he/him), MS
Usability Tester - Kevin deVoss (he/him), MA
Instructional Designer - Thelonious Goerz (he/him)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Daeun ‘Dana’ Im (she/her)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Manqi Jiao (she/her)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Avin Kana (he/him)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Amae Kurre (she/her)
Usability Tester - Zhiyang Li (he/him)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Sarah Manchanda (she/her)
Learning Technology Manager - Natasza T. Marchak (she/her), MN, BSN, RN
Student Volunteer, Dashboard and Training Development - Megan Rogers, MS
Evaluation Manager - Melinda Schultz (she/her), MA
Data Manager - Wes O’Seadna (he/him)
Graphics and E-Learning Designer - Lukas Sexton (he/him)
Usability Tester - Rachel Anne Seymour (she/her)
Communications Specialist - Benjamin Sibelman (he/him)
Usability Tester - Oliver Tjalve (he/him)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Anna M. Trakhman (she/her)
Usability Tester - Lauren Tullis (she/her), MPH
Student Volunteer, Training Development - Allison Wells (she/her)
Student Volunteer, Dashboard Development - Greg Whitman (he/him)
Project Manager - Hayley Yudelman (she/her)
Usability Tester