Beyond Compliance: Preliminary Findings from an Investigation of Environmental Health Data Systems in the United States

The Beyond Compliance project seeks to understand common approaches and challenges to environmental data management and sharing, as well as to identify areas for exploration and improvement. The first phase of this project focuses on data systems used or maintained by actors assessing environmental health: federal agencies, state departments of health and environment, researchers, and environmental justice organizations. Because data and information involved in these assessments are often hard to find, access, understand, assess, or integrate, it can be a challenge to paint an accurate picture of health risks. Furthermore, how results, guidance, and new data are shared depend on actors' respective goals, though we identified commonalities. This report explains our methods of investigation, identifies key themes and takeaways from our research, illustrates these with case studies, and poses some open questions and next steps