Building Successful Data Linking Teams for Child Welfare and Medicaid Agencies

Linking data across public systems can help improve care coordination efforts, advance research regarding populations engaged with multiple public services, and assist program integrity activities focused on those systems. The Child Welfare Health Infrastructure for Linking and Data Analysis of Resources, Effectiveness, and Needs (CHILDREN) Initiative is a five-year project funded by the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Program, run by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and implemented by Mathematica. The CHILDREN Initiative assists jurisdictions with linking child welfare and Medicaid data to improve their data infrastructure and service systems. This multi-phase project has to date recruited site partners in 4 states (including DC). After having assessed initial capacity for data linking, at the time of publication we are currently determining the feasibility of each site’s ability to link child welfare and Medicaid data and implement analytic use cases to improve service delivery, program integrity, and evaluation efforts.

One of the key features of building successful data linking efforts is identifying and bringing together the right collaborators across programs. Using the four jurisdictions engaged in the CHILDREN initiative as case studies, this brief presents what we have learned thus far regarding the range of collaborators involved in developing a strategy for building data infrastructures and sustainably linking data across programs. It also discusses approaches that help increase engagement by participating agency staff. These interim lessons can assist other entities hoping to embark on their own data linking efforts between child welfare and Medicaid systems, and likely for other efforts to link other human services and health data. We expect these lessons to be useful to identify and engage a range of collaborators and strategize how to best conceptualize the scope and uses of linked data.