The County Health Rankings show us that where we live matters to our health. The health of a community depends on many different factors - ranging from health behaviors, education and jobs, to quality of health care, to the environment.

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Public Health Professionals and Advocates

Public health professionals and advocates should look at their county’s ranking, see what is making their residents sick, and work with others to mobilize and develop broad-based solutions in their community so all residents can be healthy.
As a public health professional or advocate, you can help put this information in the hands of those who can influence needed change and make the case for programs and policies to improve the health of your community/county.
 

Here are some resources to assist public health professionals in quality improvement and in preparation for accreditation:

Other tools for public health professionals and advocates:
  • Action Communities for Health, Innovation, and EnVironmental ChangE (ACHIEVE)--fosters collaborative partnerships between city and county health officials, city and county government, tribal programs, parks and recreation departments, local YMCAs, local health-related coalitions, and other representatives from the school, business, health, and community sectors to implement improvements.
  • Healthy Community Design (a toolkit from NACCHO)--tools to help public health practitioners learn about or further their work on the connection between public health and the built environment
Here are some other things you can do:
  • Use the Rankings to attract attention to current health improvement activities and as a way to shed light on the need for action and additional resources to move efforts forward.
  • Get policymakers to pay attention. Tell them about how their county or counties ranked and open a dialogue about ways to improve health in your community.  Meet with policymakers about programs and policies to improve health and ways to fund these, such as re-aligning budgetary priorities to meet the most pressing health needs.
  • Ask policymakers to sponsor or attend a briefing on the Rankings. Suggest solutions on ways to improve health, such as supporting more pre-school education, providing more walking paths, promoting access to healthier foods, or enacting smoke-free policies, and encourage them to get behind these needed policy changes.
  • Use these results to re-invigorate your efforts to remove barriers to health or to make better health a priority in your community. The Rankings are an excellent tool to use to bring new partners to the table.
  • Use the information to guide future community planning, e.g., for setting 2015 or 2020 goals.
  • Access additional data to better direct your health improvement efforts, share lessons learned from healthier communities, and direct more resources toward the counties needing extra help.
  • Get the word out. Tell as many people as possible about the report, factors that affect health, and your community’s strengths and weaknesses. Ask for their input about ways to make your community healthier.
  • Organize. Meet with local leaders and community residents to discuss barriers to health and ways to overcome them. Host a town hall meeting or invite people to one.
  • Create or participate in a task force to look at the root causes behind poor health in your county and create an actionable plan to tackle them that involves other important leaders in the community.
  • Communicate your message. Write an op-ed – or ask a local policymaker to co-author one – and talk to local media about the Rankings and what needs to be done to improve the health of your community.