Partnership to Expand Health Equity Data to Improve Community Health

A collaboration between the University of Notre Dame Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society and Accenture aims to address community health challenges by expanding health equity data and applying analytics approaches to identify care gaps.

At the University of Notre Dame, the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society strives to further the capabilities of data science and analytics programs.

Usually, community health issues are addressed by the local government, health systems, or community organizations, but this new collaboration aims to leverage the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society's new Health Equity Data Lab to address these issues.

The lab's first venture, supported by a gift from Accenture, will involve researchers testing the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in solving healthcare challenges.

“We are extremely grateful for Accenture’s support,” said Nitesh Chawla, PhD, the institute’s founding director and the Frank M. Freimann professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame’s College of Engineering, in a press release. “We hope to develop a framework for co-creation and co-innovation to advance solutions to tackle health disparities challenges, including but not limited to responsible AI for health, an annual health equity data index and adding precision to social determinants of health actions. Our partnership with Accenture is a perfect pairing for our organizations to tackle such problems given the Lucy Institute’s mission to advance data innovations that help transform society and individual lives.”

Called the Accenture Health Equity Data project, it will also involve convening leaders from academics, government, corporations, and non-governmental organizations to engage in discussions about inequities as well as solutions.

“The Accenture Health Equity Data gift will allow us to build a comprehensive framework to identify where gaps exist for underserved communities when trying to improve health and well-being,” continued Chawla. “An understanding of these gaps can illuminate the sources of disparities that can be followed up by collaboratively developing clinical, behavioral, social and/or policy interventions that target these challenges.”

Accenture will also support a fundraising campaign for the project over a three-year period.

Increasingly, healthcare data efforts are focused on mitigating health equity challenges.

An effort from August 2022 involved expanding health equity data to standardize patient addresses, allowing providers to evaluate social, economic, political, and physical factors that impact patient health.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology noted that address standardization could enhance patient matching and medical record linking across health systems.

In addition, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and Clemson University received $1.2 million from the National Library of Medicine last May to establish a new data science training program. The program aims to provide future data scientists with an awareness of health inequities and create career development pipelines in biomedical data science for students from underrepresented groups.

After spending time with vulnerable communities and working with local groups, the program's trainees will have the opportunity to use AI to predict the strategies that will be most effective in closing care gaps.