America’s Health Rankings sat down with leaders in the public health space to discuss how access to actionable data helps them to address key health challenges. To hear the rest of our conversations, watch the full video here.
Kari Rockhill serves as the Senior Biostatistician at Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety, an organization that specializes in drug surveillance research, as well as case management, emergency services and regulatory compliance.
How has your partnership with America’s Health Rankings benefitted your organization?
As one of our data partnerships, it’s incredibly valuable to have American Health Rankings because we can only do so much to get our data out there and get it into the right hands of the right people. For us to partner up and be able to provide accurate data and timely data, and then see it get into the right people’s hands is super important for us.
What is the value of having access to public health data like America’s Health Rankings?
As a researcher, I think having public health data helps us make the best research decisions to stay on top of trends and evolve with the health of the world. I find it extremely helpful, and the sheer volume and number of health indicators that America’s Health Rankings puts together in one place for free is just incredible for the public, for researchers, for health professionals, just everyone.
Analyzing and putting together this many data in one place takes so much specialized training and so much effort, so for someone to come across and see all of this together for free is huge. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for individual states or small local public health agencies to produce these statistics themselves, so it’s such a great resource that is out there for people to access.
What is the value of these data in the context of mental and behavioral health?
Behavioral health and mental health are still young in the grand scheme of public health research, and I think having indicators out there really will bring light to gaps in needs and hopefully it will manifest in investments for prevention, treatment, education, all of those things.
It’s important to shine a light on these emerging topics — it’s desperately needed right now. It’s also helpful as a researcher to kind of get best practices on scope, definitions, how to look at it and why we should look at it. Having access to common combinations of different health metrics within behavioral health and mental health and not looking at them in silos is really important.
Who benefits from having access to public health data?
When data is accessible it really is an advantage to everyone. I think for public health and medical professionals, you can make your best-informed decisions when they’re data driven, and you stay on top of emerging topics. Generally, it’s become very clear that people want to understand their individual risk. I think they will feel more empowered having access to data where they can understand the sensitivity of their own communities to inform their own decisions and behaviors.
It is also important for us as researchers to make sure that we are on top of the emerging trends and to have access to a place like America’s Health Rankings online where we can see the other contextual factors that feed into our data.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.