Counter Tools

Counter Tools empowers communities to become healthier places by helping public health practitioners and community members collect data on their local retailers, visualize disparities using maps, and mobilize for policy change. Launched on June 28, 2012, we offered our Store Mapper and Store Audit Center tools to partner public health practitioners. And yet, we are so much more than a provider of software tools. Rather, we spend the bulk of our time talking with our partners. Phone, email, text message, in-person: our job is to assist local and state public health organizations as they pursue policy, systems and environmental interventions that create healthier retail stores, and healthier neighborhoods. What do we do? We train. We teach. We analyze data. We communicate our findings. We encourage. We problem-solve. We strategize. We plan. We help our partners demonstrate local public health problems in facts and images. Why do we do it? Our primary goal is to help our partners adopt policy interventions that create healthier environments. To get there, local data, compelling messages, and actionable science are key components. Our success is measured in policies passed and lives saved. Why us? We picked ourselves for this work. No other nonprofit technical assistance provider focuses specifically on point of sale tobacco control work. We bring what we know from science and academia, into the practice field. We have great partners - each essential to our movement against tobacco retailing - and our offering is unique. We are in the trenches: acting each day to promote health and eliminate health disparities, focusing on the retail setting. The time to join us is now.