Data Walks: An Innovative Way to Share Data with Communities

The Urban Institute HOST team developed a tool we call a Data Walk as a means of sharing data and research findings with stakeholders. A Data Walk focuses on data sharing as the platform for collaboration and can be used whether or not the community has been engaged from the beginning. A Data Walk has several objectives: to share key data and findings with community residents and program participants; to ensure a more robust analysis and understanding of the data; to help inform better programming and policies to address both the strengths and the needs of a particular community or population; and to inspire individual and collective action among community agents.