Yale-Led PopHIVE Platform Democratizes Health Data Access

New data platform provides near real-time, reliable health data to the public to aid policymakers, journalists, and public health experts.

Mar. 17, 2026 at 8:02am

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For five years, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, Anne Zink served as the chief medical officer for the state of Alaska. While leading the state's health response, she often wished for better real-time data - not only about rates of COVID-19 but also for other diseases like influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). So, when Zink joined the Yale School of Public Health in 2024, she and her colleagues decided to build the type of data platform that could have helped her while working for the state of Alaska. Called PopHIVE (Population Health Information and Visualization Exchange), the platform puts near real-time, reliable health data directly into the hands of the public.

Why it matters

Public health data has typically been fragmented, inaccessible, and outdated, limiting the ability of public health experts to get a clearer picture of disease outbreaks and other health trends. PopHIVE aims to democratize access to this critical data by bringing together a range of health care and public health data sources to provide a more complete picture on population health trends.

The details

PopHIVE pulls data from a range of sources, including anonymized hospital records, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), national health surveys, anonymized search data, and more. By bringing together this data, PopHIVE provides a more complete picture on population health trends for policymakers, journalists, health care providers, public health experts, and the general public. The platform has been used to track local outbreaks and gain new insights into illnesses like RSV, and its datasets have been cited in media reports.

  • PopHIVE launched in July 2025.
  • In October 2025, the Los Angeles Times cited PopHIVE data showing an increase in emergency room visits for infants due to RSV.

The players

Anne Zink

Former chief medical officer for the state of Alaska, now a lecturer and senior fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and co-director of PopHIVE.

Dan Weinberger

Professor of epidemiology at YSPH and co-director of PopHIVE.

PopHIVE

A data platform developed by the Yale School of Public Health that provides near real-time, reliable health data to the public.

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What they’re saying

“One thing that continued to just amaze me and frustrate me was the lack of information and data that I had to make decisions.”

— Anne Zink, Lecturer and senior fellow, Yale School of Public Health (Mirage News)

“PopHIVE has become an important data resource for a variety of audiences, including state health departments and journalists. It has been exciting to bring together different complementary data sources that have not been directly compared before and try to understand where they differ and agree.”

— Dan Weinberger, Professor of epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health (Mirage News)

What’s next

PopHIVE is building out new dashboards and data sets for topics such as maternal health, injuries and overdoses, and youth wellbeing, thanks to a $1.2 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The takeaway

By democratizing access to near real-time, reliable health data, the PopHIVE platform aims to empower policymakers, journalists, health care providers, and the public to make more informed decisions and gain deeper insights into population health trends.