Using community data to improve community health: Planning, policy, and tracking

The Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) is a report that helps communities to see, react, and act upon creating a healthy community. The report can serve as a starting point for policy development and planning by helping with community assessment of needs, quantification of vulnerable populations, and measurement of preventable diseases, disabilities, and deaths.

The goal of CHSI is to provide easy to understand reports that convey the breadth of public health issues and the uniqueness of local needs and assets. With the re-launch of CHSI in 2008, local and state public health agencies, boards of health, communities, policymakers, researchers, and others have online access to comprehensive and nationally comparable data and useful information about the health of all counties in the United States. In addition, CHSI provides peer-county comparisons, enabling communities to benchmark their health indicators against similar counties. This information can assist policy development and planning that ultimately can improve health outcomes. During this session case examples will show how communities can use CHSI to plan, influence policy, and track their efforts to improve community health status. CHSi is a partnership of federal and non-profit partners (http://communityhealth.hhs.gov).