Howard Health Counts

Howard Health Counts is a technology initiative led by The Horizon Foundation. It supports a strategic goal of providing access to timely, accurate and relevant information that is pertinent to health and wellness. The Howard County Health Department is the Foundation's primary partner, along with the Association of Community Services, Howard County General Hospital, Howard County Chamber of Commerce, Howard County Economic Development Authority, Chase Brexton and the Policy Analysis Center. 

Momentum for this project grew from the desire of these community partners to present, in a systematic way, health benchmark data. It is the Foundation's and Health Department's intent to improve the quality of health and community data over time, and to provide it to the broader Howard County community.

In addition to providing a "Health Report Card," Howard Health Counts provides a comparison to other local jurisdictions in the country on the most current basis possible.  Integral to the system is a set of heath dashboard indicators - visual representations of health and lifestyle data gathered from local, state and federal sources.  Howard Health Counts also includes analytic tools and is a rich source of best practices information.  Finally, the system will include health articles from Howard County, Maryland and the nation.

The Foundation and current partners are intent on building a broad users group to guide system development in tandem with community health priorities.

Howard Health Counts is powered by Healthy Communities Network, a system conceptualized in research at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Medical School. The Healthy Communities Institute team is comprised of scientists, researchers, technologists, community development experts and business people who are committed to providing technology to support community health development.

Learn more by visiting Howard Health Counts at www.howardhealthcounts.org.