Bridging Data & Community Action: How Activate Allen County is Empowering Community Health Initiatives with Metopio
About the Customer
Activate Allen County is a collaborative health initiative in Allen County, Ohio, working to improve community well-being through data-driven decision-making. The organization partners with Mercy Health, Allen County Public Health, and organizations like the Lima Chamber of Commerce, United Way and Regional Planning Commission to drive targeted interventions.
Activate Allen County needed localized, accessible health data to fuel community assessments, guide decision-making, improve grant applications, and foster collaboration across healthcare, government, and nonprofit sectors.
The Challenge
Limited Data Accessibility: Organizations struggled to compile and analyze health data at a granular level, hindering program development.
Funding Barriers: There was difficulty presenting compelling, data-driven grant applications due to a lack of detailed, community-level health information.
Fragmented Collaboration: Disparate data sources made it challenging for hospitals, public health departments, and nonprofits to align efforts.
The Solution
By implementing Metopio’s data platform, Activate Allen County developed the Allen County Health Atlas, a centralized, interactive tool that:
Increased Data Accessibility: Activate Allen County now provides easy-to-use visualizations and insights at all levels, enabling community organizations to analyze and act on health disparities across 12 cities and towns, 19 ZIP codes, and 35 Census tracts.
Provided Intuitive Visualizations: The team has been able to create benchmarks to compare and analyze needs across not only Allen County, but also state and federal datasets.
Strengthened Grant Applications: Metopio equipped stakeholders with data-backed justifications for funding requests, helping secure grants to establish Health Improvement Zones and direct investments to high-need neighborhoods.
Enhanced Cross-Sector Collaboration: Thanks to the Allen County Health Atlas, centralized data creates a shared understanding of the community across public health, hospitals, mental health, government and nonprofits, aligning stakeholders on unified strategies for improving community health.
Metopio’s Impact
Secured Grant Funding: The team successfully obtained funding for Health Improvement Zones, prioritizing investments in under-resourced communities.
Targeted Community Health Interventions: Activate Allen County deployed community health workers in high-risk Census tracts, improving access to tailored health services.
Strengthened Multi-Sector Partnerships: Thanks to Metopio, they’ve seen improved collaboration among hospitals, public health agencies, and nonprofit organizations, resulting in more effective resource allocation and impact-driven strategies.
What Activate Allen County Says About Metopio
By leveraging Metopio’s analytics tools and platform, Activate Allen County transformed how health data is used to drive policy, funding, and community engagement. The Allen County Health Atlas now serves as a model for how data transparency can lead to better health outcomes at a neighborhood level.
““We’d had this collaboration for many years before the creation of the Health Atlas. But many times we were frustrated with our community health assessments and the tools we had at our disposal prior to the partnership with Metopio. It was just a challenging battle for us, because we didn’t think we were seeing all the data we wanted to see and how to compile that. We’re not data scientists. We don’t have a lot of extra time, being a staff of two co-directors. But the data is such an important factor in how we do our work [and now we have that access].””
Is your organization ready to use data to improve community health? Schedule your customized tour of Metopio today!