Harnessing large-scale data well is becoming more critical to the work and impact of organisations. Understanding Society offers unrivalled data collected across adults, children, and families on a wide range of issues from social cohesion, volunteering, and charitable giving to health, poverty, and work. This session will provide an overview of how to make the most of this resource, including use of data collected during the pandemic. It will explore potential uses through case studies, and drill into the data to profile the extent to which particular disadvantaged groups are represented in the study.

This session asks ‘How can we support places to use data to address the challenges they face?’ Power to Change will chair the panel to Change with three speakers. The Centre for Thriving Places will present their Thriving Places Index, a framework measuring the local conditions for wellbeing, and whether those conditions are being delivered fairly and sustainably. The Social Economy Data Lab will present their work using credit and debit card transaction data to track the impact of Covid-19 on high streets. And Onward will present their work developing the Social Fabric Index, identifying not only the places which demand the greatest attention, but also the communities whose strength offers lessons.

Learn how to use GrantNav, 360Giving’s free search-engine for grants data, to answer your questions about grant giving in the UK. GrantNav, their flagship online tool, lets you explore, download and analyse data for £billions worth of UK grants - and it’s recently been improved and updated. In this session, 360Giving will explore and analyse UK grants data on GrantNav. You’ll leave the session understanding how GrantNav can help answer your questions and how to get the most from the new version. The session is for existing and completely new users to GrantNav, whether you’re a funder, researcher, charity fundraiser, or anyone wanting to explore UK grants data.

Alex Karet of Softwire will ask how Softwire and Moorfields Eye Hospital give medical researchers access to millions of patient scans without compromising patient confidentiality.

They will discuss how they combine these anonymised images with relevant clinical data, explaining their work producing a state-of-the-art research platform. They will highlight how this platform allows researchers to explore the available dataset without granting access to any identifiable patient records. They will mention their work balancing accessibility of the data with the information governance concerns working with personally identifiable health data. They will also explain how this helps produce datasets for HDRUK and the future of health data research in the UK.

Containing billions of person-based records, from the last quarter of a century or more, SAIL Databank is a rich and trusted population data resource based within Swansea University Medical School whose influence stretches globally. SAIL Databank is accredited to the highest international standards and exists to improve lives by providing researchers with secure, linkable and anonymised data that can be accessed and analysed from anywhere in the world – public data, for public good.

Recently voted in DataIQ’s 100 most influential people in data, Professor David Ford will speak about the pioneering work that he others undertook to establish a privacy-protecting repository for de-identified population data that could be unlocked for society’s benefit. Professor Ford’s presentation will cover the vast array of different data types entrusted to SAIL Databank since those early beginnings, including health, housing, education and other administrative data, and underline the strict governance processes that keeps the data secure but also helps to facilitate and support world-changing research.

This talk will cover the how, why, and what’s next for the recently developed Urban Health Index, from Impact on Urban Health (part of Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation).

Impact on Urban Health partnered with the Social Progress Imperative, founders of the Social Progress Index (SPI), to develop a Lambeth & Southwark specific Urban Health Index. The Index looks beyond economic indicators to understand the other important characteristics of neighbourhoods that shape health and wellbeing.

By layering data relating to different social and environmental indicators, we hope to build a better picture of the circumstances of people living in urban areas and how their environment impacts their health.

The Urban Health Index provides information on 68 neighbourhoods in Lambeth and Southwark and includes the most recent publicly available data. We capture data on 42 indicators relating to basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing and opportunity, viewable as an interactive scorecard for different neighbourhoods.