Helen Dowling, MPH is the Director of Data Initiatives at the Public Health Alliance of Southern California. At the Alliance, Helen leads work to advance state, regional, and local data projects. She also serves as the project manager of the California Healthy Places Index (HPI), a data and policy platform created to advance health equity through accessible data. With hundreds of uses across multiple sectors, HPI has been responsible for over $4 billion in funding equitably directed to communities most in need.

Helen brings a multi-disciplinary lens to her work at the Alliance, drawing on her background in sociology, information technology, and epidemiology. She is passionate about challenging data collection and visualization paradigms that perpetuate inequity, and is dedicated to leveraging asset-based framing to uplift communities that have faced historical disinvestment.

In her free time, Helen is an Instructor in the Ohara school of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. When she isn't playing with flowers, she can be found spending lazy weekend afternoons with her rescue pup, Fava.

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