Healthy Communities, Healthy Colleges: Advancing Civic Health with Data and Action | Opening Essay: March 2016 Special Issue, eJournal of Public Affairs

Increasingly, measurement matters. The capabilities and applications of “big data” are expanding to shape strategies and practices in such disparate areas as product development, marketing, sports analysis, public health, and political prognosis (Cukier & Mayer-Schoenberger, 2013). Data science is growing as a discipline, with institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley and Rutgers University offering Master’s programs in the field. Change initiatives and collective-impact frameworks rely on data, while funders insist more and more on accountability through reliable measurements (Kania & Kramer, 2011). Higher education, too, is being asked to account for its impact by embracing return-on- investment analyses, economic-impact analyses, outcomes surveys, and learning assessment. Across multiple sectors, data and action increasingly accompany and inform each other.