UW-Madison health data used all over the nation could vanish as its funding ends

MADISON, Wis. (WMDX) – A gold mine of health data used by organizations all over the country may disappear. 

For the last 15 years, the Population Health Institute at UW-Madison has put together a database called County Health Rankings & Roadmaps. It compiles all kinds of data, beyond people’s physical health. 

“What people often think is that health is largely produced by health care, which is super important, but it’s only part of the story,” said Sheri Johnson, who leads the project. “We know that the community conditions that we create as a society are really important for producing population health, so things like access to parks and libraries … things like having a safe, affordable house to live in in a neighborhood where you feel like you belong, adequate income for families so they can meet their basic needs.”

The data is accessible to everyone, but it’s especially vital to healthcare systems and government health departments. They use the data to pinpoint exactly where people in their communities may have unmet needs, and could use their help. 

“Our primary audiences tend to be the governmental public health system, the broader public health system that includes a range of community-based organizations like United Ways and food banks … and then healthcare is a big contingent,” Johnson said. 

The project’s funding is ending. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in New Jersey, was the main donor. The foundation has chosen to fund other projects instead. Its most recent grant to the Population Health Institute was $22.3 million. 

In a story by the Cap Times, one leader from SSM Health said they were devastated. Another from Aspirus called it “incredibly disappointing and concerning.”

“Rural communities, smaller, underserved and under-resourced communities are particularly concerned about the loss of this resource, because we make it efficient for them to do the work that they’re charged with doing,” Johnson said. “They have told us that our information and data and evidence is trustworthy. It’s reliable. It makes their jobs easier to do, and so we want to be able to be in a position to continue to do that, if at all possible.”

This comes at a time where the Trump administration has removed health information from government websites. They deleted information about opioid use disorder, AIDS, and pregnancy risks. Health advocates sued, and the administration agreed to restore more than 100 resources they had removed.

Johnson said the County Rankings & Roadmaps data is more important than ever. Now, she’s searching for other funding sources.  

“There are lots of changes happening at the federal level that are making it very difficult to know whether we’ll have reliable access to data for decision making going forward,” she said. “This is a really important historical data resource that we want to preserve, even if we don’t find new funding. But optimally, it would be great to find a way to continue to provide this county-level data to the 700,000 plus people that come to the website to use it, to learn from it, to do research with it.”

As many as 30 employees’ positions could be impacted if the Population Health Institute doesn’t get new funding for the project.