Community Partnerships for Healthy Children (CPHC) is an initiative funded by the Sierra Health Foundation aimed at improving the health and well being of children through community-level decision-making and actions. The initiative focuses on children birth through age eight and their families in Northern California. In May 1994, 29 communities received funding to establish or expand a collaborative, to assess the needs and strengths of their communities, and to identify the most critical issues facing young children. After developing strategic action plans to address these issues, 26 communities received grants to implement their chosen strategies.
One objective of the initiative is to build the capacity of communities and individuals to assess the needs and resources in their community, to plan strategically, to implement strategies effectively, and to evaluate those strategies.
SRI International conducted the overall evaluation of the CPHC initiative and supported each community to evaluate their progress in achieving the indicators in their strategic plan. Because of high collaborative staff turnover, it was highly desirable to provide some technical assistance to collaboratives in written form. The We Did It Ourselves: An Evaluation Guidebook details, at a 10th grade reading level, how to (1) develop outcome statements, indicators, and evaluation questions; (2) formulate an evaluation methodology and collect, assess, and summarize data, and (3) develop and disseminate evaluation findings and recommendations. The guidebook contains step-by-step instructions, a glossary, sample outcome and indicator statements, evaluation resources, and real-life stories of how collaboratives used evaluation tools.
Learning Objectives: 1. Define "learning community" and list the three phases of learning cycle. 2. Develop a child or family outcome statement and related indicators, the foundation of outcomes-based strategic action and evaluation plans. 3. Discuss what specific evaluation findings mean and what action(s) should be taken. 4. Apply this knowledge to build the capacity of community collaborative members to participate in evaluation
Keywords: Community Collaboration, Evaluation
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Sierra Health Foundation
SRI International
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Katherine van Leuwen is a Public Health Analyst at SRI International. The Sierra Health Foundation contracted SRI International to evaluate the Community Partnerships for Healthy Children Initiative.