Organizing data for results measurement and accountability is a major function of The Partnership. Healthy Carroll Vital Signs is a system for tracking and trending the health status of Carroll County - our way of "checking the pulse" of our community.

We published our first Healthy Carroll Vital Signs: Measures of Community Health in 2006.  Our latest publication, Healthy Carroll Vital Signs II, was printed in 2008. It includes our improvement objectives in Core Health Improvement Areas, benchmark sources, and key health improvement strategies.

Each Core Health Improvement Area has a guiding Leadership Team of experts and interested parties. Leadership Teams identify the indicators for their Area, and coordinate health improvement efforts.  Each indicator has a benchmark or “gold standard" that helps us to know when we have reached our improvement target.  We try to reach or exceed the expectation set by the benchmarks. If we are below the standard, then we know we must work harder in this area to move the indicator data.

In 2008, we added a new dimension to our Healthy Carroll Vital Signs when we began to chart and graph our community's progress for each indicator.  You will find these graphs in the Core Health Improvement Areas section of this website. The graphs are updated annually with the latest available data. 

A new tool was added in 2009 to simplify data reporting. The Dashboard presents 25 priority health indicators from Healthy Carroll Vital Signs.