CHR&R Toolkit for Health Planning
How to access CHR&R resources for Community Health Assessments & Community Health Improvement Plans
Context
Many public health and health care systems use County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR&R) resources for Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs), Community and State Health Assessments (CHAs & SHAs), and Community, County, and State Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs & SHIPs). Our resources often serve as a starting place to complement local data collection and community engagement.
If you rely on—or are interested in learning how you might use—CHR&R resources for your health planning needs, this toolkit is for you. It provides important information and updates about our resources and ways you can stay informed.
Staying up to date
Sign up for our newsletter here. Our newsletter is the best way to learn about CHR&R’s resources and events.
Data
You can explore Health Snapshots for any state or county. If you would like to export Snapshot tools, such as maps and graphs, use the print button on the upper right of the snapshot pages. Within the snapshots, you can download measure-specific trend graphs and maps. To export specific measure descriptions and methods, navigate from the interactive model page and use the print button.
Historically, CHR&R has released new datasets of 90 measures for nearly every county in the nation once a year. In recent years, we have moved outside of this annual cycle to provide updated data when available:
- September 2025: We released updated data for some clinical measures, including primary care physicians and mental health providers.
- November 2025: We updated 12 measures related to county-level mortality.
- March 2026: We released updated data for 34 additional measures.
CHR&R Open Source Project (OSP)
Archived data and measure code can be found at the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Open Source Project (OSP). This resource includes a pared-down version of the Health Snapshots, archived national datasets going back to 2010, the most recent code we’ve used to calculate measures, an R package (like Tidy Census) to easily bring CHRR data into R, and links to the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Open Source Community (OSC).
The OSP and the OSC are housed on GitHub. GitHub is an online platform where people store, share and collaborate on code and other digital projects using version control. GitHub enables us to expand our commitment to transparency by making our underlying measure code and data easily accessible to the public.
Our Technical Document provides detailed information about our methodology that may answer your questions.
Model of Health
Many educators and facilitators use our model of health as an organizing framework to communicate what shapes health. In 2025, we debuted the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute (UWPHI)’s Model of Health, which names how power and societal rules shape community conditions for health. On the CHR&R website, explore an interactive version of the model, which allows you to click on each measure to uncover more information about that measure’s description, methodology, sources, and more.
Explore resources to better understand the new model:
- Watch a short video
- Download the overview
- Read What Shapes Health and Equity
- Check out our 2025 report, Building Power for Health and Equity
- Learn how this new model expands on the original County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Model of Health that was developed in 2014, which showed how factors like where we live, learn, work and play influence our health
Evidence – What Works for Health (WWFH)
Educators, practitioners and students rely on What Works for Health (WWFH), CHR&R’s database with over 400 evidence-informed strategies (policies, programs, and system changes) to improve health and equity. Most strategies include an equity analysis, which rates a strategy’s impact on disparities and describes the historical and policy context, as well as root causes of inequity that a strategy is designed to address.
Webinars
CHR&R webinars engage experts from across the country about building health and equity into policy and practice. Our webinars support skills-focused teaching and frequently feature educators and training professionals. Watch recordings of all our webinars here.
- For Health Assessments: Webinars that help people navigate data updates, new strategies, program changes, and ways to use our data to shine a light on community needs:
- Making the most of CHR&R’s latest data and evidence resources
- Previewing the 2025 Annual Data Release
- For Health Improvement Planning: Webinars about specific topics, such as immigration policy, socially connected communities, undoing segregation, using data to make an impact, and many other topics.
Contact Us
We hope this toolkit helps you with your educational and facilitation planning.
If you have further questions, please reach out to us by emailing our General Inbox.