Measuring community change in disease prevention and health promotion

This report describes the use of the Community Resource Inventory to measure change in community health activities. The inventory consists of a survey of all organizations within a geographical area that might be mobilized for risk factor reduction. The inventory was utilized prior to, and again 3 years after, implementation of a health promotion campaign in a rural county and in a matched reference county. It revealed an increase in health promotion activities in key community institutions in the experimental county during a period when these activities were declining in the reference county. The Community Resource Inventory is a promising method of measuring community change and can be useful in monitoring the progress of programs in which there is a long period of latency between program initiation and measurement of outcomes, such as reduction in cardiovascular mortality.