Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives
ABOUT THE FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives is a $2 million grant initiative that supports 10 projects across the US, leveraging United States Small-Area Life Expectancy Estimates Project (USALEEP) data to explore how communities can address health disparities and ensure everyone has a fair and just opportunity for a long life. The selected grantees and their partners are committed to narrowing gaps in life expectancy by:
- effectively and powerfully visualizing USALEEP data for wider audiences, and/or
- using the USALEEP dataset with interdisciplinary approaches that address health disparities, narrow the life-expectancy gap, and promote health equity and social justice.
ABOUT THE DATA
A joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, and the National Center for Health Statistics, USALEEP data measures life expectancy at birth for nearly every neighborhood in the US, the first public-health-outcome measure available nationwide at the census-tract level. These estimates of life expectancy were created through a rigorous methodology that involved geocoding death records of US residents and using census-tract-level population estimates from the American Community Survey.
To explore this data, visit the USALEEP data interactive to learn about the life expectancy in your neighborhood.
GRANTEES
Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives has selected 10 organizations to receive funding for projects using life-expectancy data to explore health outcomes in their communities and spark action. Over the next year, these grantees will put this local data to work and address social factors that influence life expectancy, including education, air pollution, affordable housing, access to parks, and economic mobility.
Get to know the grantees and their projects by clicking on the profiles below. Learn about how each grantee is using USALEEP data and how communities will benefit from their work. Be sure to follow #CloseHealthGaps on Twitter and share your own stories of using USALEEP data to advance health outcomes.
GRANTEE SELECTION
Like the 500 Cities Data Challenge, the Visualizing and Powering Healthy Lives funding opportunities began with an open invitation for organizations across the US to submit brief letters of interest. Organizations with the best ideas were invited to submit full proposals detailing their proposed project's activities, timeline, budget, and intended impact. The applicants were judged on how their projects would meet the following selection criteria:
- centrality of USALEEP data in proposed project
- creativity and innovation in use of USALEEP data
- thematic relevance of the proposed project, especially connections across sectors
- replicable/open project approach
- integration of community expertise/stakeholder empowerment
- feasibility of the proposed project to be completed during the grant period
Please stay tuned for our grantmaking toolkit to learn more about the selection and award process.