Community Partnerships for Healthy Children (CPHC) is an initiative funded by the Sierra Health Foundation. CPHC is directed at improving the health and well-being of children by fostering the development of solutions through community-level decision-making and actions. The initiative has an emphasis on prevention and is focused specifically on children birth through age 8 in communities across Northern California.
The CPHC initiative was originally designed to have three phases of funding. The first, Community Development, began in 1994 and provided support to 29 communities to establish or expand a collaborative, to assess the needs and strengths of their communities, and to identify the most critical health and wellness issues facing young children. Program Planning grants, the second phase, were to assist communities in developing a strategic plan of action for addressing the issues they identified. Program Implementation grants, the third phase, were awarded to 26 communities.
One objective of the initiative is to build community capacity by assisting collaborative members to identify needs, resources, and best practices; to strategically plan for solutions to children's needs; and to evaluate strategies by measuring progress toward outcomes in order to effectively modify implementation. The Sierra Health Foundation contracted with SRI International to conduct the overall evaluation of the CPHC initiative as well as to provide technical assistance to each community related to defining outcomes for children and evaluating their strategic action plan. This paper will discuss the role of outcomes and strategic planning at the local level of this community-based initiative.
Learning Objectives: The audience will be able to: 1. Articulate the relationship of outcomes to strategic planning. 2. Recognize the value of outcome measurement in community-based strategic planning. 3. Understand the barriers to implementation of strategically planned activities at the grassroots community level
Keywords: Outcome Measures, Community Participation
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Sierra Health Foundation
SRI International
Center for Collaborative Planning
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Authors are employed by SRI International