About OCID
The Oregon Child Integrated Dataset (OCID) is a nonpartisan data-driven project to support policymakers and community leaders as they work to improve outcomes for children and families in Oregon. Created in 2019, OCID contains linked, cross-agency and cross-program information for children born in Oregon and their birth parents beginning in 2001. Linked by birth records, the OCID dataset shows the trajectories of children’s lifespans and enables awareness of historical and present patterns that would otherwise be isolated in the siloes of individual programs and services.
OCID is a resource unique to Oregon; no other state is known to have such a robust, comprehensive integrated dataset, representing approximately three-quarters of the state’s children. With the Oregon-specific and timely data-driven evidence that OCID generates, policymakers will be able to more effectively prioritize scarce resources and efficiently focus on the most meaningful public policy changes.
Funding and Management
The Oregon Legislature appropriated $2 million to support the OCID project in the 2021-2023 biennium.
The Center for Evidence-based Policy (Center) at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) leads OCID, providing leadership, management, data analytics, and quality assurance. The Center provides independent scientific direction and objective, nonpartisan analysis.
Areas of Development
OCID strives to actively learn and improve our methods to better provide products that are timely, relevant, and actionable for diverse audiences. With our continuous improvement approach, we are currently focusing development in 4 different areas:
- Strengthening the relationship between OCID and state-level policymaking, with an emphasis on developing OCID products that are timely, responsive, actionable, and represent data and perspectives from across Oregon.
- Actively testing mechanisms for engaging community perspectives in the work of OCID and build an understanding of how data-to-policy efforts such as OCID can effectively engage and reflect community voice.
- Develop new approaches to apply cross-program data to better understand potential patterns, interactions, and disparities for children and families served with public resources.
- Ensuring the continuation and enhancing the breadth of OCID by adding new program and service data in revised and renewed data use agreements, including expanding OCID to include all children living in Oregon regardless of birthplace.
Project History
The Center for Evidence-based Policy (Center) has been working since 2009 to develop an integrated and longitudinal child dataset to assist Oregon policymakers to make data-driven decisions to improve the well-being of children in the state. In 2013-2014, the Center received a state appropriation to test the concept of integrated data by examining Oregon foster care entry and exit, incidences of child maltreatment, and associated risk factors and characteristics using a similar integrated set of data.
This work helped to prove the capabilities of such an effort, and in 2019, with the support of Governor Kate Brown, the Oregon legislature appropriated $2 million for the 2019-2021 biennium, requiring $1 million in matching contributions from private sector philanthropies. The following 9 philanthropic funders provided matching funds to build a more robust dataset:
- Ford Family Foundation
- Health Share of Oregon
- James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation
- Kaiser Permanente
- Lora and Martin Kelley Family Foundation
- Oregon Community Foundation
- Oregon Hospital Research and Education Foundation
- PacificSource Foundation for Health Improvement
- WRG Foundation
OHSU’s Center for Health Systems Effectiveness (CHSE) was a close analytic partner in the first biennium of OCID development providing analytic support, statistical modeling, and management of the research dataset.
For an in-depth summary of OCID’s previous 2 years, read the 2019-2021 OCID Funders’ Report (pdf).