Bringing County-Level Data to the Communities It Reflects

By Jordan Ricketts, MA | Doctoral Student, Georgia State University

Last month, I had the opportunity to lead the first County-Level Data Profiles Presentation & Workshop in Thomasville, Georgia, in partnership with Resilient Georgia and Resilient Communities of Southwest Georgia. It was the culmination of months of work building PACE's (Positive and Adverse Childhood Experiences) data profiles for all nine counties in the region: Brooks, Colquitt, Decatur, Early, Grady, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole, and Thomas.

If you're not familiar with the term, PACEs refer to both Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). ACEs are common — nearly two in three U.S. adults report at least one — and research tells us that early adversity shapes long-term health, educational, and economic outcomes (Swedo et al., 2023). But adversity is not the whole story: positive childhood experiences, like feeling supported by family and connected to community, are linked to dramatically better adult mental health even among those who experienced high adversity (Bethell et al., 2019). While some data may be available to the community, it is imperative to communicate, interpret, and identify areas of need for action in each county to build a more resilient Georgia.

That was the goal this project set out to achieve. Each county profile pulls together local indicators on mental health, education, economic stability, child welfare, and community resilience, aligned with CDC Prevention Strategies, so that coalition members can see their county's story, strengths, needs, and opportunities in one place.

[Pictured: Presenter, Jordan Ricketts, MA]

We gathered on June 15th at the Vashti Center in Thomasville with a room that genuinely reflected the cross-sector nature of this work: educators, school counselors, social workers, healthcare and behavioral health professionals, as well as other community leaders. We began networking, and then we spent the morning walking through the profiles, county by county.

My favorite part of presenting data to county stakeholders is active participation. When we looked at the multitude of indicators included in the profile, members in the room immediately started connecting the figures to what they see in their schools, clinics, and their overall communities. Those conversations are exactly what these profiles were built for, helping connect what we see in the data with the lived experiences in the counties at hand. These data can help policymakers, funders, and other stakeholders understand how to build economic, mental health, and other forms of stability and care for Georgia families.

Some key strengths that came out of the County profile-led conversations include that:

• Youth school experience data reflect

  • Strong relational assets, and many reporting feeling connected to others in their school, and having an adult to talk to if they need help

    • Action step:

    • Continue to focus on student experiences and engagement. Through continued effort to ensure students’ safety and connectedness, communities may also find that this will help address student absenteeism. This is relevant as profile data also points toward the need to increase support for student attendance.

Some key areas of growth that came out of the County profile-led conversation include that:

• Profile data pertaining to mental health factors, and ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) show an area of growth to support Southwest GA families.

  • Action steps:

    • Increase the mental health workforce and active responders to the prevalence of suicidality and self-harm. Handle With Care and the Youth Violence Prevention training are two concrete ways Resilient Georgia is working towards this need.

    • Increase support systems for adults dealing with their own childhood trauma who may have limited mental bandwidth.

    • Ensure trust between active responders/professionals in contact with Georgia families

As a doctoral researcher, a lot of my time is spent on research, writing, and analysis: cleaning datasets, running models, and writing/presenting and interpreting results. It's been amazing to use my existing research skills and embark on projects like this. Translating public data into something a nine-county coalition can utilize requires skills that I've come to believe are essential if research on childhood/family adversity is to influence outcomes.  

I'm grateful to Resilient Georgia, Resilient Communities of Southwest Georgia, and the Vashti Center for Children and Families for hosting, and to every person who drove in from across the region to spend a morning with this data. The profiles are now in the hands of the people best positioned to act on them, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the coalitions build from here.

Jordan Ricketts is a doctoral candidate in psychology at Georgia State University, where her research examines how students' lives in and out of the classroom shape motivation and engagement among STEM students. She currently works as an intern with Resilient Georgia, developing county-level and state-level  PACEs data profiles for regional coalitions.