As with all interventions based on a public health model, results for students and schools may not occur quickly. The long-term view requires having quantifiable measures that can be tracked over the years to demonstrate increases or decreases in available resources or improvement – or not – in outcomes in the populations.

Having this kind of population data available for future analysis helps when demonstrating findings to policymakers.

In this constructive way, you provide not only an asset map but a population-based analysis that shows both disparities and gaps in resources. It becomes a tool to identify areas and populations that would benefit from programs and approaches for improving social and emotional development and mental health and will help in designing actions to close the gaps.

By educating yourselves and others on what resources exist and where youth live and go to school, asset-oriented mapping can provide a path to infrastructure building by revealing opportunities for:

• Matching public data about child-serving resources
• New and innovative linkages among current resources
• Reinvestment or re-purposing of scarce resources to use them more efficiently
• Identification of available resources that were previously unknown
• Agreement on priorities for next steps and joint budget requests to pursue

As you figure out WHAT you want to present to various policymakers, it will be important to also figure out HOW. For this, you will want to coordinate with your Communications Plan

Updated June 2015