Beyond Ranks: Measuring Progress in Your Community
How does a community measure how they’re doing on health improvement? To answer this question, County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program staff hosted a webinar to help participants locate various data sources, develop a plan for measuring their community improvement, and answer community specific questions.
While the County Health Rankings are great for garnering media coverage and serving as a call to action, they should not be the sole data set by which communities measure their progress. A community’s rank can help inform their work and progress, but staff cautions communities against relying completely on ranks.
So, how does a community evaluate their progress?
- Figure out the purpose of measurement: Will you be using measurement to learn from what’s working, to inspire and motivate stakeholders, or for accountability with funders? The intent of the evaluation will impact the type of data and evaluation tools that should be used.
- Define your “community”: Evaluators should define what geographic region they want to assess and identify what they would like to measure. For instance, is your community more concerned with improving outcomes, or with improving health equity.
- Pick the most appropriate data for your evaluation goals: Communities can use individual measures from the Rankings or find data at the county, zip code, and census tract level—it is important to pick what data meets your specific needs. Local hospitals, academic institutions, local or state health departments are also great resources of valuable information.
Change takes time. The success of an intervention or initiative may not be quantifiable in data for a number of years; but as you begin the road to improvement, think about how you will measure your progress.
For more resources on measuring progress, click here.
To learn how you can use Rankings data, click here.
If you are interested in finding more data, click here
For more help with evaluation, click here.