Springer has just published a new article about one of the oldest community indicator projects in the world and the long term social and political impacts of the project. The indicator project is located in Santa Cruz County California and is conducted by Applied Survey Research (an OECD correspondent for the Global Project). The article appears in a special edition of the Applied Research in Quality of Life Journal (ARIQ) of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) which is focused on community indicators that are used as tools for social change. The article focuses on how the Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project (CAP), which began in 1994, has contributed directly to improvements in the areas of teen drug and alcohol use and universal health care for children (a rarity in the United States). The CAP, by virtue of its longevity, strength, and structure has also contributed to several indirect outcomes such as new community leadership, new interagency commitment to social change, community level agreement on political action plans, new ways to combine and draw in funding, and ongoing evaluation of program performance and population level changes. There are many other key benefits of community indicator projects that can be witnessed in Santa Cruz County and other communities that have launched their own indicator projects. A community indicator project: