Using the Tool

Establishing a functional health dataset that serves as a resource to improve community health requires a fundamental understanding of the existing issues in the community, as well as the data that is readily available or able to be collected. The commitment of an organized body of stakeholders that can approach data collection from a variety of perspectives is also crucial, with each of these groups able to collect, analyze, distribute, and maintain relevant data. The following steps outline a public health surveillance approach to growing the availability of and access to health data that supports creating healthy communities.

• Organize Key Contributors and Establish Goals Establish a meeting or retreat to discuss the establishment of the data that must be collected to achieve a comprehensive, actionable database. Include individuals from both the public health perspective, urban planners, including transportation planners, and influential non-profits, if applicable. Discuss the communities in need or the disparities that are known, and identify the data that will be needed to identify such gaps in order to develop policies to amend them. Identify a set of healthy community goals that data would help support as a starting point, that can be refined as more data is known.
• Identify Existing Data Create a comprehensive inventory of all “healthy communities” data available. This step includes identifying data sources, recording how often data is collected, organizing information according to geographic scale, and assessing the potential for benchmarking with comparable state and national datasets. The outcomes of this step should be organized as a report and distributed among service providers and representatives from the various data sources to ensure that all relevant information has been recorded and is accurately accounted for, and to ensure that the local health community has confidence in the accuracy of the data (does it pass the “smell test?”). Examples of data include: Access to health care facilities; Percentage of population with insurance and/or receiving Medicare or Medicaid benefits; Access to Parks (distance from households to parks); Amount of time spent engaging in physical activity; Access to Healthy Foods within the neighborhood (location of grocery stores or others selling fresh produce);  Air Quality; Location of housing of population groups in relation to environmentally hazardous areas; Quality of the housing stock;  Crime and Violence data by neighborhood; Transportation Options by neighborhood and Frequency of Service; Prevalence of mental health cases and access to services for mental health patients, among others.
• Select Appropriate Organizations/Agencies Once the analysis of the existing data is complete, identify additional organizations and agencies that can help fill information gaps. Individuals within this new group may have access to additional data sources and will add to the diversity of expertise and insight needed to establishing goals for future data collection. A coalition of data providers and data users should be organized in order to establish goals, implement future data collection efforts, and maintain an ongoing open dialogue not only about the data, but about what it says about community health issues and needs, and how they might be addressed.
• Acquire Tools for Collection, Analysis, and Dissemination Depending on the level of detail and statistical accuracy identified as necessary by the coalition, new data collection tools may be required. Research and educational institutions usually maintain their individual Internal Review Boards with standards of practice for acquiring community-based data. Determine the level of accuracy that is needed to implement policy and actions from a planning perspective that may differ from statistically-valid needs of public health or medical institutions and research. Discuss how this may impact timelines for completing research, as well as required funds and staff dedication.
• Implement survey/surveillance system/data inquiry Collect the necessary data through standard survey practices outlined and approved by the coalition. These surveys or surveillance systems may focus on individual behavior patterns, identifying risks, surveying local populations, organizing focus groups, or purchasing data from existing sources.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation Once the data is collected and organized, the coalition should review the results for accuracy and relevance to informing the identified goals.
• Analyze the results Where possible, the results should be summarized in reports for potential use across a variety of platforms and among a variety of audiences. Health data as it relates to healthy communities can be of importance to a wide range of users, including many outside of the public health and planning fields. To be useful, it must be reported accurately but in easy-to-understand terms, and with clear statements as to its relevance for the particular audience. For example, data on obesity (lacking in the CONNECT region) must be reported in terms of how obesity can be addressed through changes in public policy, in the built environment, programmatic changes in schools or workplaces, etc. Data without recommendations attached are often easy to ignore.
• Disseminate results Work with the coalition to develop an outreach strategy that targets potential data users.