Outcome-focused, accountable collaborations: Community Balanced Scorecards expand in public health

This paper and presentation will explore the expanding uses on Community Balanced Scorecard (CBSC) tools, such as strategy maps, community wikis, and Community Results Compacts at the local and state levels. CBSCs enable the strategic use of data to manage the complexity of collaborations while maintaining a focus on the ultimate goal of measurable and sustainable community health improvements. In 2009, five community health partnerships pioneered the use of CBSC strategy mapping to apply to issues such as access to care, behavioral health, reducing obesity, and community wellness, and they have made a variety of beneficial uses of their strategy maps and built on their experiences in a variety of ways. They achieved different levels of field implementation in 2009, and some introduced new innovations. Since then, one community has started building a Community Balanced Scorecard from its strategy map, several have developed measures for a scorecard, another has developed its own local version of results compacts for partners, a sixth community has started using this methodology, several more have written the methodology into major grant applications, and a state has started using it for strategic planning and accreditation preparation. The authors will draw from these different experiences to demonstrate how CBSC tools are starting to prove their value in public health. The author will also show how these tools make use of the Public Health Accreditation Board's draft standards so these experiences can be useful for accreditation, and how they can build on NACCHO's MAPP process to make community partnerships more effective. The authors will also address questions such as: How can public health professionals manage the many collaborations crucial to community health? And how can standards-based assessment data and QI be translated into better health outcomes?