Creating an informed network of community partners: Health of Houston Survey 2010

The Health of Houston Survey 2010 (HHS2010) was designed to provide sub-county level information on Greater Houston area residents and to create a reliable and efficient infrastructure to periodically document health needs and improvements in valid and consistent ways. One of the unique aspects of this project was its commitment to maximizing dissemination by linking potential data users to data. The first step in the process was to identify the health information needs of potential data users. The survey team partnered with local government agencies, health and social service collaboratives, and neighborhood and civic groups. Representatives and key informants from these groups provided input based on organizational priorities and professional experience, either through a web-based or mail questionnaire. They ranked a list of 67 potential health topics, suggested new topics, highlighted socio-demographic groups of interest and named their existing data resources. First, (the good) we received over 150 responses from 88 unique organizations. The information gathered through this participatory process guided HHS2010 questionnaire design, as well as our outreach and data sharing plans. Second, (the bad) some areas were without neighborhood or civic association representation, biasing our input towards stakeholder organizations. Third, (the ugly) we experienced some intramural competition from our peer academic institutions for access to community partners. Our approach describes how local health surveys can be better tailored toward local data users' needs by partnering with them in the design and planning stage. Additionally, we describe lessons learned about engaging with a range of community partners.