Category: Blog
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Just Released: Toolkit for information exchange initiatives from the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT at HHS
I’m excited to share with you this toolkit for information exchange initiatives that aim to address the social determinants of health – shared by the Office of the National Coordination for Health Information Technology at the US Department of Health and Human Services (known as ONC). The toolkit (PDF downloadable here) synthesizes subject matter expertise…
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Our 2022 Year in Review
Our 2022 Year in Review report is now available to review! This annual practice of review and reflection is an opportunity for us to step back and assess our progress across multiple objectives as we work towards our shared goal: a future in which it’s easy to share, find, and use information about the resources…
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Introducing the Whatcom County Resource Information Collaborative
This post is brought to us by Kristi Slette, Secretariat of the Whatcom Resource Information Collaborative in Washington state. Welcome, Kristi! Washington state’s Whatcom County – the north western most county in continental U.S. – is a resourceful community with many collaborative community-based organizations that serve residents in need. For many years, the leadership and…
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Michigan 211’s new resource data infrastructure: providing social service information as a service
Since the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, Michigan 211 has received an increasing number of requests for real-time access to our social service directory database from partners and collaborators across the state. We actively maintain over 40,000 service records offered throughout Michigan, verifying its accuracy on an ongoing basis – and…
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Upgrading the Human Service Data Specifications: 2022 development cycle underway
As Open Referral’s network grows – involving more stakeholders in the development of interoperable resource directory information supply chains – our tools and practices must evolve in kind to support more complex needs. So we are excited to share that Open Referral has initiated a new development cycle to upgrade the Human Service Data Specifications.…
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Progress Report 2021-22: Highlights from our Network
I’m excited to share Open Referral’s Progress Report for 2021-2022. You can download the report as a PDF here, and view the document online here. (All of our reports are accessible here.) Unlike our usual Year in Review, this report really describes activity across a period of 18 months overall. This is 6 months later…
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Tackling Data Dilemmas in Social Care Coordination: A Whitepaper on Community Information Exchange
Last year – with sponsorship from Robert Wood Johnson Foundations’ DASH program, and in partnership with the Regional Data Alliance at University of Missouri St Louis – I co-authored a whitepaper that aggregated research and recommendations from across the emerging field of “social care coordination.” This paper provides a strategic framework in which to understand…
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Improving access to legal aid by improving search results with schema.org
Despite the vast amounts of information on the Web, finding reliable information about legal services through internet searches is harder than many expect. Basic searches — for needs like assistance with evictions, help with public benefits, or protection from domestic violence — often turn bewildering as results on Google, among other search engines, typically seem…
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Evolving the DC Community Resource Information Exchange’s Inventory Capabilities
In the District of Columbia, we’re developing a new approach to the very old problem of resource directory information management. Years ago we shared the story of the first phase of our work here on this blog, and we’re now excited to share results from our second phase. The DC Community Resource Information Exchange initiative…