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At the June 2020 Alliance Annual General Meeting, Alliance members unanimously passed a resolution to advance sociodemographic data collection in our sector, with a goal of all member organizations having a 75% data completion rate by 2024. Collecting this data is essential to our mission of advancing health equity, because it provides evidence we need to advocate for our clients in priority populations and tailor service delivery to improve care. It also helps us to obtain funding and support for programs that assist our most vulnerable clients.
To help us reach this ambitous goal, the Alliance embarked on a study during the summer of 2021 to examine how sociodemographic data is collected and used in CHCs. Through interviews and focus groups with 33 individuals, we examined how sociodemographic data is currently being used at eight Alliance member organizations. Our participants described the roles of staff, leaders, and board members as well as barriers to data collection and use. This report summarizes the study findings.
To help you put the lessons of this report into practice, we have also developed a package of helpful resources and tools*. Some of the included resources were developed by the Alliance, and some were developed by system partners, but most were shared with us by our member centres through the study. They include a script and plain language glossary, data collection guide, client brochure, sample workflow diagram, staff training materials, case studies, and EMR tools (disponible en français ici).
*PLEASE NOTE: Most of these tools were developed for use with the 2012-2023 sociodemographic questionnaire and are not consistent with the updated questionnaire being rolled out in early 2024. Updated tools, including custom EMR forms, scripts, and a glossary will be shared in January 2024.*