sharing data to
power change

Achieve Brown County (ABC) formed an innovative data-sharing agreement in Green Bay, Wis., to support their work of advancing cradle-to-career outcomes.

The team set out to combine student data with data from major health providers to learn the status of health and mobility conditions for young children. To access critical school data, ABC started conversations with each superintendent, then developed a universal data-sharing and data use agreement. In January 2020, each superintendent signed on.

Brown County’s data-sharing partnership between the public sector, the health care system and the public school system is the first and only of its kind. Now, the team is well positioned to share data with partners in all sectors. If the data uncovers a specific challenge for a group of young people, then ABC will create an action plan with community partners and decide which entities are best able to address that issue.

StriveTogether provided ABC with a grant to build relationships across Brown County to make this project possible. One goal of StriveTogether’s grantmaking strategy is to fund local projects that could be spread across the national Cradle to Career Network.

“As much as we’re doing this for young people in our communities, it can change the lives of children nationally,” said Spencer Bonnie, ABC’s executive director.