Good health counts: A review of community indicator reports

As communities strive to address health concerns and monitor and sustain progress, community indicator reports can be a powerful tool. Community indicator reports use selected indicators to track social, health, and economic conditions in defined geographic areas. Reports provide a tool for measuring crucial information in a community, making it available to a broad audience and translating that knowledge into momentum towards change. These reports are particularly important as tools to address health disparities in low income communities and communities of color. Many of these reports are able to promote community changes that reflect the needs and values of community members. They do this by fostering community participation, informing policy, gaining media attention, emphasizing the role of community environment in this collaboration, and holding institutions accountable for the results they produce.

With funding from The California Endowment, Prevention Institute synthesized findings from a review of community indicator reports and interviews with individuals in the document Good Health Counts. This presentation will focus on how reports can be used to expand our understanding of community health and to advance community education, advocacy, policy change, and collaboration efforts.

This session will allow participants to articulate a vision of health that includes community environment, medical services and provides communities with a framework for change. Among findings, Prevention Institute has identified multiple examples of successful indicator reports. Good Health Counts identifies the strengths and limitations of community indicator reports, criteria for effective indicators, and summarizes key findings.