Join us on Thursday, December 9th and 11:00 AM EDT for a virtual workshop-style roundtable discussion with other child-serving organizations in various stages of the collaborative process. Everyone will leave with an understanding of the possibility of a collaborative approach and the steps necessary to be ready to implement it.

Your organization and your schools are serving the same children; wouldn't it be great if you could know how the children are doing in school - grades, behavior, attendance, etc. You could collaborate to understand the value of the programs you're providing, including measured improvements, attendance, etc. You could have real-time data that enables your community to understand the difference your organizations are making.

The main purpose of community data sharing is to create a community-wide information system that supports interactions with many service providers to deliver a comprehensive, longitudinal perspective on each child, leveraging data and technology to provide better, faster, and continuously improved services. In Community Data Sharing Initiatives - Community Collaboratives - participants share information regarding the children they serve. It is essential to have a clear definition of how the sharing is managed and authorized and which information is shared. 

The Backbone Organization (Longitudinal Community Database) of the collaborative is the lead partner organization that is responsible for community agreements on data governance and data sharing, an agreed-upon approach to parent consent, collaborative goals, and the associated data set to be shared. This organization is responsible for Data Management Services: the “scoping” of data access for data sharing partners and users, defining the approach to mapping children between organizations, consent administration, and an approach to managing data quality. [e.g. duplicates]

• Legal Data Sharing - Community Agreement
• Organization & User Scoping 
• Child-Organization Mapping
• Consent Administration
• Data Quality

Data Users are partner organizations that are interested in accessing the Data Contributors’ child-related information either in aggregated, de-identified or identifiable format. The leverage the COMET Community Reporter. Commonly, Data Users are also Data Contributors, but not necessarily (e.g.: funding organizations like United Way, County, or City services).

• Aggregated & De-Identified Community Reports & Exports
• Geo-Coded Map Demographics
• Data For Program Evaluators
• Compare Your Organization To The Community
• Identifiable Data Reports & Exports, For Those With Proper Consent

COMET Operations

Data Contributors are partner organizations that directly interact with children and record child-driven information in COMET, or in their own operational database - Pass-thru Data Contributor -- that will be integrated into the data-sharing initiative. Another approach to contributing data is to provide program participation as a Roster Data Contributor through a list of your children (ID, last, first, DOB, gender). Note that contributors "own" the data they contribute in an explicit or implicit agreement of confidentiality [e.g.: Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)] with each child’s parent.

Data Contributors - Collected In COMET

• Community Organization Running Programs & Providing Support
• Funder Collecting Data From Multiple Service Providers
• School District SEL Program
• City Sending Data (Pass-Thru)

Data Contributors - Collected External To COMET

• Student Information Systems (SIS)
• Community-Based Organizations
• Government & Heath Systems

Parent Portal

Parent / Guardian involvement is key to a data-sharing initiative. COMET’s community data sharing solution supports parent approval of the sharing of their child’s data. Recording and leveraging parent consent is fundamental to a data-sharing initiative. 

• Parents Understand & Control Their Child's Data & Can See Their Child's Information, Including Assessment Results
• They Can Provide Input On Their Child & Communicate With Those Who Work With Them

Community Reporting 

COMET’s community data sharing solution is powered by our sophisticated reporting application - COMET Community Reporter, supporting aggregated and de-identified community reports and exports, geo-coded map demographic visualization, data for program evaluators, community comparison reports, and identifiable data reports and exports. 

• Aggregated reports: Typically, such reports may pull data from multiple Data Contributors and consolidate / aggregate accordingly. These reports are authorized through the data-sharing agreement between the service provider partners. 
• De-identified child-level reports or data extraction: Typically, these reports are used for research purposes. Records are de-identified meaning that they do not contain any data element that could identify a child (e.g.: name, ID, etc). These reports are authorized through data-sharing agreements between the service providers. 
• Identifiable child-level records: It is possible to report on identifiable child data, but this data sharing requires valid parent consent and clear authorization from the Data Contributor.

Only data sharing can enable outcome measurement across organizations. So, if an after-school program and a school want to measure if their collective work has a positive impact on school attendance and academic outcomes, and to determine which programs are effective and to fund, data sharing is essential.

Ideally, every community's child-serving organizations will share data and collaborate to improve common goals; realizing the vision of a comprehensive, longitudinal community database supported through the efforts of Partner Organizations that work together in a Community Data Sharing Initiative in which its children are thriving.

Ready to join a collaborative? Take our readiness quiz.

Community (n): a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

COMET is helping to change communities into true collaborations. For a community collaborative to succeed in their mission, they must be able to share knowledge and learn from each other. And this requires the ability to share their findings/data in a way that is safe and easy. Doesn't sound possible, does it? Until recently, it wasn't. COMET's Data Reporter Platform can accept data across silos, across database software systems to tell the whole story of your community. Current features include graphic visualization, identified and/or de-identified (based on consent), flexibility to create and aggregate groups, export filtered data, and leverage geocoded address data to understand regional trends and more.​​​​​​​

General Features:

• Create reports allowing for customized dashboards with only the information they need and are allowed to see 
• Graphic visualization, identified or de-identified (based on consent), flexibility to create and aggregate groups, export filtered data, and leverage geocoded address data to understand regional trends.
• HIPAA & FERPA compliant 
• Share your dashboard with other users.
• Create a Dashboard Template that allows other users to mimic your dashboard and the reports within it.
• Create custom reporting groups for all of your reporting needs
• Use the Roster Contributor module to add additional reporting groups.
  
  

Reporting Capabilities: By default, all records are associated with a reporting group. A single record can be associated to multiple reporting groups.

• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Data: With proper consent, organizations will be able to access the records within a reporting group in an identifiable way. You will still be able to run aggregated reports. However, you can "toggle" the underlying data to see who the data relates to, rather than just seeing the value of the data. Additionally, a single-subject report is also available, which outlines all of the milestones of a given student/person over a period of time. Different data elements can be toggled on or off, depending on what information is desired.
• Aggregated, De-Identified Data: In some cases, identifiable data isn't required or approved for specific users with access to the data. For these cases, the Community Data Reporter also allows for an aggregated, de-identified view of the data. Rather than seeing the names of who the records associate to, names and PII data will be redacted
• Geocoding: COMET will convert the addresses of the records in the database to X and Y coordinates that can then be displayed on a map.
• Exporting Capabilities: Data can be exported in Excel, PNG, or PDF format, and users can select to export a specific report, or export an entire dashboard.
  
  

This robust, customized, web-based reporting platform is allowing our Collaborative (both School-Age and Whole Child Health Collaborative) users to view and report on their data from many different angles and helping improve outcomes for children. For more information and to schedule a personal demo contact us at 585-673-3200 or info@comet4children.com.        

                                                                                                                                                                            Every child has a story...COMET has the details!

Original Posting 10.05.18

From healthy birth weight to school readiness, Chemung County is on the path to tracking the developmental progress of all children from birth to age 5. The project started years ago with school districts wanting to look at school readiness. They worked with Children's Institute to bring RECAP to Chemung County. With RECAP they looked at assessing social-emotional health and other domains for Pre-K students with a focus on getting kids ready for kindergarden.

Jump forward a few years, enter CIDS and their infant registration program. Because of the smaller size of their county and having only one hospital, CIDS was able to interact with the families each time a baby was born in their county. At the hospital, a nurse would ask the family a few simple questions and record data about the mother and the child's health. The County had a goal of wanting to connect all this information together - from birth to school age.

The group decided to use COMET because of our connection with the Chemung RECAP team, who were already using the system. Two years later we've rolled out a case management system that records when a child is born and tracks referrals that may be made to programs like Nurse-Family Partnership or Healthy Families. As the kids grow and enter Pre-K, the system will have all their data going back to that initial infant registration on the day they were born. That's pretty cool!

Click the links below to learn more about this project!

Case Study

Project Overview