Addressing Disparities to Expand Workforce Opportunities in Roseville, CA

Challenge

Roseville, CA was one of ten cities selected to participate in the City Health Dashboard’s 2024 Data Challenge, an initiative designed to help cities build on and improve how they incorporate health and equity data into their local program planning, stakeholder development, and community engagement efforts. Through the Data Challenge, Roseville gained access to 1:1 technical assistance, workshops focused on data storytelling, using data for community engagement, and many others, and toolkits to improve project planning and data decision-making, all aimed at bettering data capacity.

The Roseville team consisted of an unconventional coalition of members of the local government, a marketing agency, and a nonprofit organization. The team’s goal was twofold: to use data to provide a clearer picture of neighborhood specific job opportunities, and to engage residents – particularly youth – throughout the process of creating and promoting new workforce development programs. Through the Data Challenge and exploring the City Health Dashboard, the Roseville team learned that they had been lacking data specific to their three priority neighborhoods. Accessing these data helped the Roseville team to be more strategic in how they allocated scarce financial resources, ensuring that their programs served those with the greatest needs. They also soon realized that they were missing critical voices on the team, voices specifically from the local community college and members of the business community who could help improve job prospects. Both groups would need to be engaged if they were going to recruit businesses and students to participate in newly planned workforce development initiatives.

Impact

The Roseville team used the City Health Dashboard’s data on High School Completion, Income Inequality, and Unemployment to identify disparities between their three priority neighborhoods and the rest of the city of Roseville. In recognizing the need for broader collaboration, the team invited representatives from the city’s local community college, the Chamber of Commerce, the local high school district, the County Board of Education, and economic development and community engagement specialists from the city to hear Roseville’s “data story” and make the case for their involvement in the partnership. Overall, the presentation was a success, educating attendees on disparities that they had not known existed, and motivating them to get involved by supporting programming that would help improve outcomes.

With stakeholders aligned and actionable data in hand, the team set out to craft impactful workforce development strategies that were designed to serve both residents and local businesses. A key element involved leveraging shared data to support the Chamber of Commerce’s talent pipeline management initiative, which strives to bring business, education, and workforce partners together to create and sustain the workforce. This collaborative effort also enabled Roseville to successfully obtain an equity and inclusion grant from a regional transportation agency. The grant will fund targeted strategies to reduce socioeconomic disparities in core neighborhoods—disparities that were revealed by the City Health Dashboard’s data. The initiatives will focus on connecting residents with workforce training and employment opportunities, while actively removing barriers to job access and success. Roseville’s experience underscores the value of localized data in attracting new partners, fostering cross-sector collaboration, and maximizing the reach and effectiveness of community programming.