Sustaining quality health care for Latinos through capacity building in evaluation: Lessons learned from 17 community/academic partnership in 14 states

Background:

Community health care organizations (CHCOs) serving US Latinos, the largest, fastest growing, medically underserved minority population, often lack the in-house capacity needed to evaluate their programs' outcomes. Having the in-house capacity for designing, conducting and presenting evaluation results can be a determining factor in a CHCO's long-term sustainability in this era of increased competition for limited funding. An innovate program that partners CHCOs and academia, with funding support from the Johnson & Johnson Community HealthCare Program, is helping bridge this evaluation gap by translating knowledge into practice.

Methods:

CHCOs and doctoral students (guided and supervised by a faculty member) are paired for a period of two years to improve the CHCOs' capacity in evaluation. In-house capacity is built using evaluation methodologies specifically developed to provide a standardized approach that can also be adapted to the needs of individual CHCOs.

Results:

At the end of a two-year period, CHCO program staff is able to create appropriate goals, SMART objectives, identify and organize into a conceptual framework those key variables needed to measure their program's outcomes. CHCO staff also learned how to develop data collection tools, create databases, and enter and analyze data using EPI-INFO, an user-friendly, free software created by the CDC. The staff also gained skills for presenting data in a clear, concise manner. In addition, the doctoral students developed their skills in translating knowledge into practice in an easy-to-understand, culturally appropriate and scientifically sound manner.

Conclusions:

CHCO/academic partnerships are effective in increasing the monitoring and evaluation capacity of community health care organizations providing care to Latinos across the country.