Building capacity in formative evaluation: The role of CHWs

The literature indicates the effectiveness of CHWs in helping bridge cultural and linguistic barriers between community and health care providers; teaching community members about cardiovascular health (CVH); and increasing adherence to preventive and treatment regimens in clinical settings. However, there exists little documentation on the role, type of tasks, and competencies of CHWs in program evaluation. In 2006 the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) partnered with Gateway Community Health Center (GCHC) to train CHWs to conduct formative evaluation activities. The NHLBI's Your Heart, Your Life CVH training and educational curriculum required revisions since it was first published in 2000. GCHC offered the opportunity to use certified CHWs to update and test the revised manual with other CHWs and patients. This presentation will describe the innovative ways CHWs were involved in the updating of the Your Heart, Your, Life CVH training curriculum, evaluation of the content, and developing and testing of evaluation tools. We will provide results of: 1) content discussion from CHWs; 2) focus groups with patients; and 3) reliability testing of instruments. In addition, we will describe the methodology used to collect data and create databases. We will also described how trained CHWs were involved in conducting these activities as a means to build capacity within the Latino community to reach and engage community members at risk for heart disease.