The
National Association of Planning Councils (NAPC) provides
the data in this web site as an online source of comparative health
and social indicator data for urban areas in the United States.
The site provides data on health and social conditions in the 100
largest metropolitan areas in the country, and profiles initiatives
and interventions to address them.
Three sets
of indicators are presented: Deprivation
Index (factors impacting health status), Child
Well-being Index and NAPC's Leading
Health and Social Indicators.
The Deprivation
and Child Well-being Indexes were developed by Dennis P. Andrulis,
Ph.D., Research Professor at the State
University of New York Health Sciences Center at Brooklyn,
with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
NAPC's list
of Leading Health and Social Indicators was developed by the association's
Social Indicators Committee, which is comprised of professional
researchers from member organizations. The selected Health and
Social Indicators, when considered as a whole, are reflective of
the general health and social well-being of a community relative
to national standards and other communities.
NAPC announced the release of a new social indicators report, "Measuring What Matters, Making A Difference," at the national conference (co-sponsored with the Community Indicators Consortium) on May 13, 2005, in Washington, D.C. Highlights of the report were presented by Ben Warner, NAPC Board member and Associate Director of Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. (JCCI) in Jacksonville, Florida. Click here to download the report. To comment on the report, please email NAPC.
NAPC members
have been involved in the development and use of social indicators
for more than a decade and in 2002 issued "From
the Bottom
Up: A Report on the NAPC Social Indicator Project." This
report documents local contributions and emphasizes the importance
of developing a national set of social indicators starting with local
concerns for and expertise on the issues addressed by such indicators.
NAPC is a non-profit
national organization, which promotes quality community planning,
supporting its member organizations as they provide leadership
on community-based human services and health planning and action.
Planning councils bring people together to identify needs and work
toward solutions, mobilizing community involvement, developing
and coordinating services, advocating for informed decisions by
funders and policy makers, and linking people with community resources.
