Building a Cross-Sector Data Infrastructure for Vaccine Distribution

Overview

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I led the design and implementation of a data infrastructure that unified public health, local government, and community-based partner data. The goal was to coordinate equitable vaccine access across Harris County and provide real-time insights into who was being reach, where, and how effectively.

Challenge

At the start of the initiative, vaccine-related data was siloed and fragmented. Public health departments tracked vaccinations, while dozens of non-profits tracked outreach through spreadsheets and anecdotal notes. Without a unified system, it was impossible to track equitable vaccine access or coordinate outreach in real-time, especially in BIPOC and low-income communities with historically limited healthcare access.

Approach

As an evaluation consultant for the initiative, I designed a cross-sector data model integrated vaccination, outreach, and event data into a single reporting framework. This included connecting partner outreach and event data with zip code-level vaccination data to generate monthly dashboard. I also facilitated data onboarding sessions, and built templates to ensure consistent, privacy compliant reporting.

Interactive map showing community vaccination events, created to help residents find accessible, trusted vaccine sites.

Choropleth Map of Harris County showing aggregated partner outreach over population.

Outcome

The system tracked over 900 vaccination and outreach events, connected over 52,000 residents to vaccines, and confirmed that all 38 priority zip codes surpassed the 60% BIPOC vaccination threshold, ten points about the original goal. The infrastructure became the backbone for monitoring, partner coordination, and funder reporting.

Shared and equity-centered data systems have the power to transform how public health, government, and community sectors work together. By connecting these systems, we showed that coordination can be both ethical and effective. Collaboration becomes real when every sector can see the same story in the data.

Tech Stack

Every Action, Google Suite, Periscope, BigQuery