The value of a web-based interactive regional health scorecard in setting public health priorities

Community-based health improvement efforts sometimes focus on emerging health issues rather than following a more proactive planning process. Although there is an abundance of easily accessible data on state and national websites, community leaders frequently don't know where to find data that will help them to prioritize local efforts.

The La Crosse Medical Health Science Consortium (LMHSC) is a formal collaborative of the 2 major health care providers and 3 higher education institutions in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and covers 20 counties in western Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, and northeastern Iowa. To help prioritize regional health improvement efforts, we developed an interactive scorecard for each county, which allows for tracking indicators (ie, leading causes of death, accidents, cancer, health and behaviors, heart disease, infectious diseases, maternal and child health, sexually transmitted infections, and substance use/abuse) and monitoring health improvement efforts. The website www.communityscorecard.com allows the user to examine a county's statistics over time (as far back as 1998) and compare data among LMHSC's 20 counties, the state, and the nation as a whole. To aid prioritization, a grading schema allows each county to grade itself compared with selected health indicator benchmarks, like the Healthy People 2010 goals.

Since going public in March 2007, the website has received more than 10,500 visits by more than 2300 unique users from 48 states and 46 countries.

Prioritization and engagement of the community in health promotion activities requires quick access to accurate data that have been translated into information. We describe the development of a web-based population health scorecard for this purpose.