Communities Speak is a collaboration among the Urban and Social Policy Program at Columbia University, together with the School of International and Public Affairs and the Department of Biomedical Informatics as well as CUIMC. In addition, we work with a city-wide network of community organizations and not-for-profit partners. Our objective is to expand community data collection in cities, in order to increase government’s capacity to develop policy in response to unanticipated economic and social shocks. In turn, our goal is to improve government’s responsiveness to the needs of low-income and minority populations as well as small businesses, who tend to experience the greatest adverse impacts from these shocks.