Community indicator reports as tools for change

With funding from The California Endowment, Prevention Institute synthesized findings from a review of nearly 100 community indicator reports and interviews with more than 60 individuals in the document Good Health Counts. This presentation will focus on how community indicator reports can assist communities in addressing major health concerns and monitor and sustain progress by broadening an understanding of community health, advancing community education, advocacy, policy change, and collaboration efforts.

Community indicator reports use carefully selected indicators to track social, health, and economic conditions in defined geographic areas. Powerful reports are those that provide a tool for measuring crucial information in a community, making the information available to a broad audience, and ultimately translating that knowledge into momentum towards change. Many reports reviewed by the Institute were used to foster community engagement, inform policy, call media attention to pressing issues, and were instrumental in holding institutions accountable for the results they produce.

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 major strengths and limitations of community indicator reports, criteria for effective indicators, and summarizes key findings with 10 elements that make an effective report and 7 elements in the process of developing an effective report.