WorldFAIR Deliverable 8.2 “Urban Health Data – Learning and training” aims to describe efforts from WorldFAIR WP08 to create a community of practice in FAIR and CARE principles for urban health, train this community of practice, and show improvements in our own implementation of the FAIR principles in our work. This deliverable has two key parts: 1) describing a training course we developed in June 2023 on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to control, Respect, and Ethics) principles and an activity we are conducting in May 2024 to bring together the local FAIR/CARE community in Philadelphia (and beyond); and 2) an updated FAIR implementation profile as part of the SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina – Urban Health in Latin America) project.
In the first part, we describe our inaugural course, “How to create a data management plan with CARE and FAIR”, conducted 26-30 June 2023 with ten participants. The course aimed to bridge gaps in understanding the FAIR and CARE principles. We found an increase in participants’ knowledge and emerging interests in the topics through pre- and post-course surveys. The course encountered challenges in exemplifying the FAIR and CARE principles in practical urban health settings, highlighting a need for improved materials that clearly illustrate how to operationalise these principles. Moving forward, the Urban Health Collaborative is organising a series of activities in May 2024 to continue developing a community of practice around these principles. These include roundtable discussions, webinars, and interviews with project leaders, aimed at refining training materials and fostering a culture of continued education and support in data management and stewardship. This will include a keynote lecture by Dr. Theresa Anderson that will be livestreamed to the WorldFAIR community.
Our updated FAIR Implementation Profile describes our efforts to harmonise multi-country urban health data, aiming to create a machine-actionable resource that aligns with the FAIR principles. This initiative represents a critical step in addressing the data management complexities of urban health research, offering a pragmatic approach to the harmonisation of extensive datasets across various countries and domains. We summarise the project journey through the development and implementation of a data engineering initiative. We detail the use of data engineering techniques such as Dimensional Modelling and One Big Table to manage and organise data, making it accessible and efficient for analysis. In updating upon WorldFAIR Deliverable 8.1 here, we connect the project’s specific challenges to the broader goal of establishing a robust, FAIR-compliant data infrastructure in urban health research. Finally, we introduce the SALURBAL portal, a user-friendly interface designed to facilitate public access to the project’s harmonised data. This portal is expected to serve as a model for similar initiatives, promoting the principles of FAIR data management and underlining the potential benefits of such approaches in urban health and beyond.
The full report is available on Zenodo.
