About

Community-based organizations (CBOs) often have insight into their community’s needs and priorities that outside institutions, simply cannot replicate. Many CBOs even collect data to inform their decision making. However, our work engaging with CBOs from diverse backgrounds has brought to light a need for CBOs to better utilize the data that they collect, especially with respect to visualization. What is presented here is led by a group at the PRISE Center at the University of California San Francisco and our partners involved in the Communicative Justice Learner Leadership Initiative. We had the idea to expand the reach of data visualizations as a means for community capacity, among communities, organizations and individuals.

This toolkit is meant to build capacity within CBOs that have limited data abilities to make informed decisions, so that they can tell the stories that matter to their communities through data visualization. While the onus to address data-driven disparities should not be on the communities that are harmed by them, we believe that it is nonetheless important to equip them with the tools that they need to level the playing field.

This work was supported by funds made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, under CDC-RFA-OT21-2103: National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities Among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved, Including Racial and Ethnic Minority Populations and Rural Communities (grant A138216) through the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The findings of this research are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of or endorsement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.