Your Voice, Our Mission: Insights from the Community Commons Survey
Community Commons is a robust online platform that supports changemakers working to advance equitable community health and well-being. For over a decade, we’ve connected those driving change to the best tools, resources, data, and stories to support this work. During that time, we have witnessed many changes in our communities, and, in turn, we have evolved in order to meet changemaker needs. If you participated in our survey—thank you! Your feedback will help us evolve a Community Commons that is more capable of serving changemakers.
We recently conducted a survey of Community Commons users to better understand how Community Commons and affiliated sites are used as changemakers and how we can evolve our offerings to provide greater support moving forward. If you participated in our survey—thank you! Your feedback will help us evolve a Community Commons that is more capable of serving changemakers.
We’re sharing some key takeaways from a recent Community Commons User Survey below. If there are key solutions you’re looking for that you don’t find on our site, please reach out to let us know!
Data Remain Key for Changemakers
Over the years, we’ve seen that those working to advance equitable well-being are consistently looking for various kinds of data for different circumstances—to assess community conditions, monitor trends, prioritize areas for investment, and more. Even as data have become more accessible in the decade-plus since Community Commons was founded, users report they could still use support with identifying what measures make the most sense, depending on the topic area, catchment area, and project goals. Users are also keen to access continuing education about how to best use and interpret data within the context of community-change work.
In 2024, Community Commons launched the Community Indicator Library, a living library of data indicators, or metrics, that changemakers use to measure health, well-being, and equity in their communities. The Community Indicator Library helps users find indicators relevant to their community change work, identify reputable datasets and sources for those indicators, and explore related topics on Community Commons. Indicators in the library are categorized into thematic areas; these categories can be used as filter terms to explore indicators in the library or search by other topics.
Community Commons also hosts the Foundations for Community Health Data Users learning series, where we’ve pulled together this collection of foundational content to support changemakers exploring and using data to advance equitable well-being. Whether you’re new to community health, or have years of experience and just need a little refresher, this collection is meant to support changemakers using various kinds of data. The series tackles common data concepts and challenges—things like Using Benchmarks to Explore Population Health Data, and Disaggregating Population Health Measures.
Community Commons is stewarded by the Institute for People, Place, and Possibility (IP3), a nonprofit organization working to create healthy, equitable, sustainable communities that advance well-being now and for future generations. IP3 provides data consultation to myriad partners—providing support for constructing custom measures and indices, digging into data around specific issues (e.g. water quality), measuring hard-to-measure concepts, like social connection, and more. IP3 also offers access to IP3 ASSESS, a web-based data solution designed and built for changemakers, as well as Data Dashboards powered by IP3 ASSESS.
Foundations for Community Health Data Users
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Published on 04/17/2024
Changemakers are Looking to Learn
Over the past few years, IP3, Community Commons, and partners have developed several learning series, including the Fundamentals of Public Health, Advocating for Public Health, and Health in All Policies. These are specially designed for changemakers to unpack key concepts, learn new skills, and take action for health and well-being. We have also developed a curated list of overview pages that break down important, timely topics. From our survey, we learned that interest in our learning content drives use of Community Commons for many users. Nine in ten Community Commons users (87%) said they visit CommunityCommons.org occasionally or frequently to find information on a topic of interest. Almost half (42%) of respondents said they could use support learning about key topics and skills.
Changemakers Use the Vital Conditions in a Multitude of Ways
Over the last six years, IP3 and Community Commons have partnered with Community Initiatives, The Rippel Foundation: ReThink Health, WE in the World, the WIN Network, and Thriving Together partners to support the research, testing, refining, and promotion of the Vital Conditions framework. The Seven Vital Conditions for Well-Being is a useful framework for conceptualizing holistic well-being and the Conditions that give rise to it, as well as identifying levers for community change and improvement. It brings together major determinants of health, exposing how parts of a multi-faceted whole work as a system to produce population well-being.
This framework helps users consider the properties of places and institutions that all people need all the time to be healthy and well, and Community Commons users report enthusiasm for the framework and how it supports a holistic approach to community-change work. About half (45%) of survey respondents were familiar with the framework, many of whom used the framework to identify priorities, align strategies, and measure well-being.
The Vital Conditions framework is one of the core data frameworks accessible on IP3 ASSESS, where users can access over 75 data indicators grouped into the seven domains in the framework, thus enabling exploration of how a given community fairs when it comes to things like Reliable Transportation and Belonging and Civic Muscle, compared to state and national benchmarks, as well as drilling down to view each individual data indicator. Data on IP3 ASSESS are accompanied by great Community Commons resources too.
Cross-Cutting Themes: Working Across the Vital Conditions
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Organizing Around Vital Conditions Moves The Social Determinants Agenda Into Wider Action
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North Sound Voices: What Are Vital Conditions and Why Do They Matter?
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Published on 06/13/2023
Bringing the Vital Conditions to Life through People, Place, and Possibility
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Changemakers Find Value in the In Common Newsletter
The newsletter from Community Commons, In Common News, has continued to gain traction with thousands of subscribers. Many avid readers agree that In Common News is a timely and trusted source of information, and exposes them to new ideas and concepts. Nine in ten (87%) subscribers say they would recommend In Common News to a friend. Each month, hundreds of new resources are added to Community Commons, and our newsletter highlights those new and timely tools, resources, data, and stories right in your inbox. Sign up to receive In Common News, the bi-monthly newsletter from Community Commons:
If You Know, You Know! Community Commons Has Good Brand Recognition, Even Among Users Familiar With Other IP3 Projects.
We’re proud to share that survey respondents reported strong brand recognition for Community Commons. Survey respondents say they often find something new of interest when they visit Community Commons, and report high levels of satisfaction with the information they find and with their experience on the website. We’ve been around for over a decade, listening to our users and learning how best to meet their needs, and we’ve continued to fine-tune our approach and offerings to do just that.
We know the connection between IP3 and Community Commons can be confusing. IP3 is the organization behind Community Commons, a public, robust online platform that supports changemakers working to advance equitable community health and well-being and a resource connecting those driving change to the best tools, resources, data, and stories to support this work. Community Commons powers PHERN—the Public Health and Equity Resource Navigator–and the Health Impact Assessment Space on Community Commons.
More On the Survey
IP3 conducted the 2024 survey of Community Commons users between November 13 and November 27, 2024. The survey was open to the public via Community Commons and IP3 websites and was promoted to our newsletter subscribers. We heard from over 450 users. Respondents answered questions about their use of communitycommons.org, the relevance of content and features of the site, and how Community Commons and partner sites could support their work in the future.