The Colorado Rural Health Center (CRHC) has launched the Health Awareness for Rural Communities (HARC) Data Bank, which the agency says enhances access to streamlined data sharing and collaboration for rural healthcare providers, communities and other interested stakeholders.

The HARC Data Bank is a collective of over 100 population health measures. It contains demographics, health indicators, and projections from all 47 rural and frontier counties in Colorado – everything from expected emergency room visits to the rate of colorectal cancer deaths and number of adults with high blood pressure.

As the state's office of rural health, CRHC serves not only as a resource for rural health facilities, but the clearinghouse for information concerning rural health. Through secondary analysis of publicly available data, the HARC Data Bank is the only known data bank dedicated solely for examining county-level health data for rural Colorado.

The agency says the HARC Data Bank is a low cost solution for presentations, raw analysis, infographics, or highly customized reports, and that CRHC's ability to analyze the data based on the user's customized interest also makes the HARC Data Bank a novel resource.