Steps to a HealthierNY—Broome County: Local level program evaluation

The purpose of this presentation is to describe local level program evaluation for the Steps to a HealthierNY initiative in a rural upstate New York county. The Steps program addresses three leading health indicators: diabetes, obesity, and asthma; and their underlying risk factors: physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and tobacco use. This session will focus on: (a) how the evaluation framework, model, and planning tools have directed evaluation activities, (b) how analyses from evaluation activities have guided program planning, and (c) successes and challenges from the first three years of the grant. Evaluation activities in New York State are based on the Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health and an evaluation model which includes health risk behavior surveillance, program monitoring, local impact studies, and coordination with national evaluation of the Steps to a HealthierUS Program. Evaluation of the Steps to a HealthierNY program will be traced from logic model development to establishment of annual work plans and evaluation plans to reporting process measures and outcome data. The planning tools are used to define intervention specific process measures which are reported monthly through a web-based program monitoring system. National core performance measures and outcomes are monitored using the Steps Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and Steps Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Analyses of these results have provided direction for modifying existing interventions and developing new evidence-based disease prevention and risk reduction interventions. In addition, local impact studies have demonstrated programmatic successes for specific interventions. Key findings from the first three years of local program evaluation include significant increases in the proportion of adults who walk at least 5 days per week (BC Walks campaign), significant increases in the proportion of adults who have heard of the Steps to a HealthierNY (communications strategy), and significant improvements in knowledge, self-reported health behaviors, and anthropometric measurements for participants in a targeted healthy lifestyle education program (Mission Meltaway). Now in its fourth year of funding, the early successes of the Steps to a HealthierNY provide initial evidence that broad-based community-level intervention programs may have a positive impact on chronic disease prevention and risk reduction.