Casey's Community Opportunity Map: A Research-based Tool for Engaging Communities in Prevention
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
11:00 AM - 11:45 AM
This interactive session will introduce a powerful and user-friendly platform—the Community Opportunity Map—that provides data on the health and well-being of children and families. Casey Family Programs’ Community Opportunity Map is an online map tool that highlights the aspects of communities that are associated with safe children and strong families. The tool allows anyone to find child and family well-being data for any neighborhood across the nation, in order to analyze, plan and act alongside others to build Communities of Hope. Designed for non-data experts, this tool empowers advocates and community leaders to identify needs, address disparities, and identify strategic, data-informed opportunities. Through hands-on activities, participants will explore how this free web-based tool can uncover community needs and assets by examining data at multiple geographic levels (state, county, zip code, tribal lands) and across key population characteristics (race, sex, ethnicity, age). The presenter will share insights from several organizations that have successfully used the tool to support families and promote child safety, reducing the number of children in foster care. These examples include integrating community data into CQI in Oregon and creating a family resource center network in Virginia. By the end of the session, participants will walk away with practical skills and strategies to integrate local community data into their work supporting children and families.