About SDOH
SDOH develops public health informatics solutions focused on building better data insights through practical technology applications. Our mission is to harness technology to improve public health understanding while protecting privacy and advancing health equity. Our approach builds on a foundation of academic research and technology experience.
"Public health informatics is the systematic application of knowledge about systems that capture, manage, analyze, and use information to improve population-level health outcomes."
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
About Michael Knapp
Michael Knapp is the Founder of SDOH, where he conducts policy research and leverages data solutions in the public health and social services sectors. His work focuses on data interoperability and strategic planning to support the use of Social Determinants of Health in health and human services systems.
Previously, Knapp was Founder and CEO at Green River (www.greenriver.com), a company he founded in 2000 that uses emerging technology to improve public education, promote public health, and protect the environment. A flagship project at Green River is Open Path (www.openpath.host), an open source software platform designed to help communities, states, hospitals, and insurance companies better serve people in the homeless community.
Knapp holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, with a concentration in environmental health, and a Masters in Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His work at Yale focused on data science, developing expertise in spatial statistics, biostatistics, and social science statistics. Early in his career, Knapp served as faculty at Marlboro College Graduate School. He is passionate about social justice and has demonstrated how software can enhance transparency, improve efficiency, and enable data-informed decisions to address urgent social problems.
Research · Discovery · Innovation
Over decades of collaborating on public health innovations, Michael Knapp has established a strong track record.
Learn more about examples of his leadership and expertise in research, innovation, and collaboration:
Health Informatics PhD
Work at Yale
Research on hazardous waste impacts in Stratford, Connecticut led to developing methods for topographic cancer visualization. An aspect of this work included study on adverse birth outcomes, which revealed how crucial social factors are in understanding health - an insight that came in the 1990s when public health informatics and our understanding of social determinants were still emerging.
HIPAA Checker
Green River's HIPAA Checker ensures the privacy-compliant release of localized health data. This algorithm enables public health organizations to safely share granular, neighborhood-level health information while fully protecting individual privacy under HIPAA regulations. The software automatically detects and prevents potential privacy violations, finding optimal ways to present data at the most detailed level possible while maintaining confidentiality.
CT Health
Equity Index
The Health Equity Index, created in collaboration with the Connecticut Association of Directors of Health in the early 2000s, helps communities visualize and understand how factors such as housing, education, and economic status impact public health outcomes.
Use of Health Equity Index ↗
Presentation on Health Equity Index ↗
Innovative
Health Mapping
Green River's HIPAA-compliant heat mapping technology transforms public health data into detailed, dynamic visualizations while protecting privacy - enabling clearer insights for officials and for communities.
My Healthy
Community
A data-rich, interactive public health dashboard for residents, state agencies, and community organizations built by Green River for the Delaware Public Health Department.
Connecticut
Department of
Public Health
Developing a universal data publication framework to streamline health data disclosure across the department, replacing the current dataset-by-dataset approach. This partnership begins in December 2024.