Metrics for Healthy Communities: A tool for leaders of community health initiatives

What data exist to support and evaluate community health improvement initiatives? What limits organizations in their ability to use and cite these data? How can we readily connect downstream health outcomes to community development activities upstream?

Questions such as these motivated Wilder Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis to join forces in the development of "Metrics for Healthy Communities", a website for anyone who seeks to plan, evaluate, or fund community health improvement initiatives.

Metrics for Healthy Communities aims to:

• Build the evaluation savvy of its users by focusing attention on outcomes, not just outputs. 
• Help shape and advance collaborative thinking about the long-term changes that well-designed community health improvement initiatives can produce, and the steps that are required to achieve them. 
• Standardize evaluation across the field of community health improvement by promoting a common language and a common set of metrics.    

Since its initial launch in August 2015, Metrics for Healthy Communities website user data show that the desire to improve and measure the health of one’s community reaches all the way around the globe—from New York, USA to Victoria, New Zealand. The site has attracted visitors from thousands of cities in 140 countries.

Nearly 4 years later, we are pleased to announce the launch of Metrics for Healthy Communities 2.0. This newly expanded version of our Metrics website features a new user interface, more logic models, and links to the research evidence base.

Need evidence for a healthy food access program grant? Interested in how the financing of affordable housing is linked to improved health? Want to evaluate the impact of a child care center in an under-served neighborhood?

Metrics can help to answer these questions, and more!

In the beginning stages of planning a community health initiative? Visit our Get Started page to search for relevant activities and measures.

Are you a field expert looking for quick access to community health-related data sources? Search our data directory.

Wondering what in the heck is a logic model? You can learn the basics of logic models and learn how to use the site here. This site is designed to work even for folks without any formal research training.

Metrics is based on the wisdom of more than 600 practitioners who work in the fields of community economic development, housing, early childhood development, education, public health, and health care in the United States. Check out our list of site contributors -- you just might find a new cross-sector partner in your state!

So, take a look at the site. Let us know what you think!