Evaluation of a county-wide initiative to empower community health workers

This presentation will describe the stages of evaluation of the Community Health Worker Project collaborative, a part of Community Voices Miami. This project is unique in its inclusive and participatory approach to community health planning. Thus, its evaluation is designed to be a collaborative and participatory process that includes all stakeholders and focuses, among other things, on documenting communication practices.

As the project goes through its phases of development, coordinators worked with evaluators to set objectives and develop data collection tools, but most importantly, they developed mechanisms to elicit input and feedback from all stakeholders throughout the system. Communication assessments, online and telephone surveys, focus groups and document review methods were used at different points in the process to inform the collaborative about potential barriers and opportunities. This ongoing effort was instrumental to the success of the initiative, and is still a key component of the project.

In this presentation, we will share the evaluation strategies used and explain how results were disseminated and used to empower community health workers and support the work of the collaborative.