NJ Population Health Data Initiative Approves Pilot Projects

The New Jersey Integrated Population Health Data (iPHD) project approved pilot funding and the release of data for multiple research proposals addressing the project’s four top health priorities: tackling the opioid epidemic, improving maternal and infant health, addressing social determinants of health (SDOH), and supporting the response to COVID-19.

According to the press release, the iPHD aims to strengthen population health in New Jersey by establishing and supporting a process to integrate health and other data from public programs for use in population health research. Integrating these data allows researchers to focus on health issues and needs specific to the state.

“The approval of these research projects is an important milestone for the iPHD,” said Joel Cantor, ScD, distinguished professor and director of the Center for State Health Policy (CSHP) at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, which operates iPHD, and ex-officio member of the iPHD Governing Board, in a press release. “Getting data out the door and into the hands of researchers represents the next step toward fulfilling our mission of facilitating research that has a high likelihood of leading to better health and well-being of New Jersey residents.”

The CSHP, Rutgers, and the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) have collaborated closely to support the iPHD’s work. The NJDOH funds the pilot awards.

“Population health requires an interdisciplinary, data-driven approach and collaboration to improve health outcomes,” said New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli in the press release. “In compiling and linking these data sets for researchers, we hope that the insights they gain will inform efforts by government, healthcare providers, and communities to improve health for all New Jerseyans.”

In this award cycle, four projects will receive data and funding.

Researchers from the Rutgers School of Public Health will investigate perinatal depression.

“We applied for data access through the iPHD because of the unique opportunity that the iPHD initiative provides, linking the universe of birth records in New Jersey with hospital discharge records,” said Slawa Rokicki, PhD, an instructor in the department of health behavior, society and policy at Rutgers, in the press release.

Linking these data together could help determine who is at risk of making postpartum emergency department visits for mental health reasons, insights that can inform intervention strategies, she continued.

Investigators from the Center for Health Services Research at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research will assess community-level trends in COVID-19 and opioid use disorder (OUD), which can highlight the issues facing a particular community and how to effectively address them.

A project out of the Central Jersey Family Health Consortium (CJFHC) will examine COVID-19’s impact on birth outcomes.

“Many important questions regarding the population impact of COVID on pregnant people and their babies can only be answered by linking multiple population-level data sources, and the iPHD program gives researchers this unique opportunity,” explained Cheryl A. S. McFarland, PhD, director of evaluation and analytics at CJFHC, in the press release.

The final pilot will allow researchers from the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine to study how improved access to psychiatric care for children in New Jersey communities may reduce mental health-related hospitalizations.

The iPHD was launched last year in an effort to inform health policymaking in New Jersey by encouraging administrative data use in research and promoting a better understanding of the factors affecting population health and government program efficiency.

Researchers participating in the initiative can request access to various types of health data, including information about births, mortality, hospital billing records, and COVID-19 surveillance, to study health issues affecting the state’s population.