Community Health Assessment Resources

The links below provide health statistics or analysis guides for community health assessments. There are resources useful for everyone from beginning to experienced health planners.

1. Open Data Pennsylvania. Collection of data and reports from many state agencies and offices.
2. Health Statistics A to Z. Descriptions and links to data for a variety of public health topics.
3. Technical Assistance Links to guides for conducting and reporting a community health assessment.
4. 500 Cities Project (CDC) Opens In A New Window . Modeled data for large cities throughout the United States.

Important: Please note there is little reliable data for areas smaller than counties (for example, municipality, ZIP code, etc.). This is due to several factors:

• There is a lack of current and detailed population data for small areas.
• Databases used for state or regional statistics choose their sample size based on those larger areas. Statistics based on a smaller sample than planned would be unreliable.
• Health data often deals with rare events. In these cases, small areas do not have enough events for reliable statistics.
• Local, state, and national laws and regulations may not allow releasing any potentially identifiable data.
• Some databases do not contain information below the state or county level.