Data regarding local constituents often have important impacts on local decision makers; however, local-level measures are frequently not available in many areas of the nation.

Indian Health Service. Because of the Indian Health Service’s (IHS’s) central role in providing or contracting for health care services for American Indian and Alaska Native populations, it is in a unique situation to serve as a centralized source of data on obesity rates in tribal communities, despite the vast geographic distances between tribal groups. The Resource and Patient Management System is the IHS patient computerized database and contains clinical and demographic information from outpatient and inpatient encounters from more than 300 IHS and tribal health facilities. The result is a measurement and evaluation tool at the local, regional, and national levels that is stronger than the tools generally available for other high-risk groups (IHS, 2004).

California State Assembly Districts. The California Center for Public Health Advocacy compared 2001 and 2004 data on youth fitness and weight status from the California Department of Education’s Physical Fitness Test and aggregated the results by state assembly district. The resulting local-level fact sheets organized by county and by assembly district have been instrumental in engaging legislators in obesity prevention issues and in the passage of several assembly bills regarding schools foods and beverages (California Center for Public Health Advocacy, 2005).