“ARDX’s heart is in collaborating and developing relationships that help create healthier communities.”
– Dr. Angela Reddix
Access is essential to building community interactions, and broadband access to the Internet is a large part of creating that access. While increasing the proportion of adults (aged 18 and over) with broadband access to the Internet is a Healthy People 2030 objective, data shows that the percentage is getting worse instead of better. In 2017, 55.9% of adults reported having broadband access to the Internet, but the most recent data in 2020 shows a decrease to 41.5%. The desired target is 60.8%.
According to Healthy People 2030, “People’s relationships and interactions with family, friends, co-workers, and community members can have a major impact on their health and well-being. Healthy People 2030 focuses on helping people get the social support they need in the places where they live, work, learn, and play.
Positive relationships at home, at work, and in the community can help reduce these negative impacts. But some people — like children whose parents are in jail and adolescents who are bullied — often don’t get support from loved ones or others. Interventions to help people get the social and community support they need are critical for improving health and well-being.”
ARDX partners with federal, state, and local governments, non-profit and for-profit organizations to increase social and community support, foster community collaboration, and create an environment for evolving neighborhood and community resources, such as libraries, as centers for lifelong learning engagement and health equity.
Case Study
Case-in-Point: Academic libraries and museums in North America are turning increasingly to the use of statistical data to assist and support library and museum management decisions including building communities and resources for distressed communities. While this concept has been around for some time, it has normally been confined to areas such as budget, collection use, and improving the efficiency of specific operations, especially processing. Rarely has data been tied to broader performance or service quality objectives at the national level. The Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is a trendsetter in this area, having already conducted major surveys across the nation in support of the library, museum, and archive communities’ mission – collection care. The results of surveys including: Heritage Health Information Index 2004, and Public Needs for Library and Museum Services Household Survey 2010, helped to usher in sweeping preservation and visitation tracking changes to the library and museum communities. The same was expected when the final report of the Heritage Health Information Survey 2014 was promulgated to the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums.
ARDX® was responsible for the statistical analysis, report development, and electronic publication of research results related to libraries and museums in the United States and its territories based on the Heritage Health Information (HHI) data from 2014 and the 2010 Public Needs for Library and Museum Services (PNLMS) survey data. Following the statistical analysis, ARDX developed marketing materials to enhance the profile of libraries and resources available to build communities, especially in distressed areas.
