Campus civic health initiative: Measuring and improving campus and community civic health

Civic health data are increasingly being used to inform the national dialogue on civic life, expanding notions of population health to include additional social indicators. New academic community partnerships are being created in many communities across the United States that use data and dialogue to encourage coordinated action for better health across communities. These partnerships are considering multiple indicators related to health, economic development, education, safety, arts and culture, civic engagement, environment, housing and transportation. In this session we will define civic health assessment tools such as the National Conference on Citizenship's civic health assessment (“Civic Life in America”) and local applications such as the Greater Portland (Oregon) Pulse. We will illustrate how these tools integrate multiple measures, and demonstrate emerging collaborative strategies being used by campuses and local communities, as part of the “Campus Civic Health Initiative” of the American Democracy Project, hosted by AASCU. Thirty public colleges and universities are piloting the processes and tools of the Civic Health Initiative, and are identifying ways that campuses can partner with communities to improve the civic health of communities. The Initiative is in its first year, and over a three-year period the goal is to develop a set of metrics of civic health that are nationally informed but locally developed and adapted, as well as promising practices for community-academic partnerships. Through this Initiative, colleges and universities will be able to better collaborate with their communities to assess and take action on relevant civic health issues.