Editorial Policy
Introduction
The Healthy Williamson County website is intended to help community members and policymakers learn about the health of the community. It is sponsored by Bluebonnet Trails Community Services, Baylor Scott & White Health, United Way of Williamson County, and Williamson County and Cities Health District. It provides local health data, resources, best practices, news articles, and information about community events. In keeping with the Healthy Williamson County Coalition's mission and values, it is important that the site provides balanced information on a broad range of topics affecting the health of our community and highlights the assets in our community.
These editorial guidelines provide background on the different features of the site and how the content on the site is selected and managed, and describe the governing body of the site.
Governing Body
The Healthy Williamson County sponsors serve as an editorial and advisory group for the Healthy Williamson County website. The primary role of the Healthy Williamson County sponsors is to guide the planning process and to determine practices, local indicator selection, data collection, data analysis, priority setting, development of tracking measures, marketing strategies, and public input.
Healthy Williamson County support staff review the news articles, promising practices, featured content, and calendar of events to ensure balanced content. The Healthy Williamson County website does not endorse or advocate for any political initiatives or political figures.
Community Indicator Data
Nine topic areas provide a measure of how our communities are doing. For each indicator, the actual value is shown as well as information about how we are doing compared to other geographic areas (the red-yellow-green gauge), how we are changing over time (green or red up and down arrows), or how we compare to a national or state average (blue/white or tri-color gradation gauge). While we may be doing better on some indicators than other areas or compared to a state or national average value, we should still work on improving all indicators. Indicators are described and links given to sources and what the values mean. The primary aims of the indicator system are to inform and facilitate positive change. To inform, we must provide accurate, reliable, and timely data at a geographically meaningful level. To ensure accuracy and reliability, the indicator system uses sources that meet the following criteria:
- Validated methodology for data collection and analysis
- Regular, scheduled publication of findings
- Data values for small geographic areas, such as counties and postal codes that are available for all county-level locations in the U.S. or locally through community partners.
Methods
Through the Healthy Communities indicator system, community members have easy access to critical information. The status of the community can be displayed in several ways that are easy to understand.
Regional Comparison Indicators
For indicators that are meaningfully displayed as an objective value that can be compared to other communities, the local value is assigned a status (green = excellent, yellow = fair, or red = poor) based on how the local value ranks in comparison to other communities. These indicators compare a community's measure to a distribution of other relevant geographies. For indicators where a high value is good, indicators are assigned green values if the value is greater than or equal to the 50th percentile, yellow if the value is between the 50th percentile and the 25th percentile, and red if the value is less than the 25th percentile. The median is the cutoff between the green and yellow rankings.
Regional Comparison Indicator Example: The infant mortality rate (number of infant deaths/100 births) in each of the 3,077 U.S. counties is collected and entered into a spreadsheet. The rates are ordered from lowest to highest. The 50th percentile or median value is the rate of the 1,539th value in the list of values (3,077 / 2 = 1,538.5; standard rounding rules round the number to 1,539). Often, the distribution of counties within a state or other region must be used instead of U.S. counties because the data are not available nationally. The cutoff point between yellow and red is the 75th percentile, or the 2,309th value in the list of values.
Average Comparison Indicators
For indicators that are not meaningfully displayed as an objective value (i.e., median home value) or where we do not have values for other communities but do have a national or state mean value, the blue/white indicator dial (if direction does not matter) or tri-color dial (if direction matters) simply shows how our community compares nationally or statewide. This indicator is a useful way to present community data compared to the state or national median or mean value and allow the user to interpret the local indicator value.
Average Comparison Indicator Example: In a community, the median home price is above the median home value compared to 39 other counties in the state. The fact that the local median home value is greater than the median can be interpreted in two ways, depending on the end-user's perspective: If you are selling your home, high median values may be beneficial, but if you are trying to purchase a home, high median values may be a negative.
Time Period Comparison Indicators
These indicators show how an outcome varies over a significant amount of time, a commonly accepted period in the field, as indicated in the description. These indicators have three states: getting better, getting worse, or stayed the same. These indicators are typically used when distribution data are not available to calculate a comparison distribution or when trend data seem more relevant and important when compared to other locales. They are also useful to highlight when a measure compares favorably to other communities but is actually moving in the wrong direction.
Time Period Comparison Indicator Example: In Community A, the percentage of the population that is overweight or obese is 50.5%, and this percentage has grown over the last three years. The yearly percentages exceed the CDC 2010 Healthy People goal for healthy weight (<40% of adult population overweight or obese), but the local value (50.5%) is still better than the median value in the state, where 61.3% of the adult population is overweight or obese. In this case, a time period comparison indicator can be used to show that the community trend is increasing and that there is a growing percentage of the adult population that is either overweight or obese.
Community Indicator Data Standards:
- Data must be scientifically collected using quality research standards and/or be peer-reviewed.
- Data from academic institutions or government entities are preferred.
- Service statistics from local agencies are not typically scientifically collected. This information can be incorporated into the site in other areas but not usually as community indicators.
- The source of the data is identified, and if a conflict of interest could exist on the part of the data collector (e.g., a data collector with a commercial interest in the data), that will be clearly noted.
Criteria for consideration of proposed new indicators:
- Does it add value? (Does it fill a gap? Is it a good enough proxy measure for an area for which we want an indicator? Is it better than a current indicator?)
- Dependable updates? (Is there the capacity for ongoing measurement?)
- Is it scientifically valid? (Has it undergone a peer review process?)
- Are the data available (both a value for our county and some comparison data)?
Promising Practices
Databases of promising practices and articles/literature are both initially populated by a database of national resources created by the Healthy Communities Institute. In our local communities, we have the opportunity to add local content to these sections. The sources include health departments, federal agencies, universities, and community organizations — not individuals.
Adding a promising practice: The site administrator (Williamson County and Cities Health District) and the Healthy Williamson County Coalition support staff will consult with community experts/leaders in the topic area to determine the appropriateness of adding local promising practices. Again, we will use the four central questions to determine appropriateness of content: Does it add value or fill a gap? Are there dependable mechanisms to keep the content current? Is it valid and credible? Is it available?
The intervention must be community-focused, health-related, effective, and an evidence-based practice. The research and/or evaluation process must be rigorous and the results statistically significant.
Feature Articles
On the homepage, we may post local feature articles and stories on topics that enhance, analyze, and provide deeper understanding of the community health indicator data, potentially promising practices, and community assets. Feature articles may be as simple as linking to existing web articles about a particular issue along with a brief article that relates to local assets or indicators, or they may be written and created locally.
Adding feature articles: The site administrator and the Healthy Williamson County Coalition support staff will choose the feature articles based on what they deem important local health news.
Featured Content
On the homepage, we may highlight a local health program and provide the website and relevant resources for that program.
Adding featured content: The site administrator and the Healthy Williamson County Coalition support staff will choose the featured content.
Resources
Links to government sites, academic centers, and some community-based organizations and foundations will be permitted only if the other site includes health and human services–related information and data. Links will not be provided to advocacy organizations and organizations that offer or support products or services that are detrimental to health, such as tobacco products.
Website Survey
Website survey questions are non-scientific polls to gather information about how well the Healthy Williamson County website is serving its audience.
Adding website survey: The site administrator and the Healthy Williamson County Coalition support staff will manage this tool.