Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Evaluation of the process and outcomes of neighborhood-level policy training workshops

There have been increasing calls for community-academic-practice partnerships to have a broader effect on health through engaging community members in policy advocacy. Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Building Capacity for Policy Change (NWP), a project of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC) in partnership with PolicyLink, aims to enhance the capacity of neighborhood residents and organizations to engage in the policy change process to positively impact the health of families in Detroit. URC is a community-based participatory research partnership which builds upon strengths of the communities involved, to conduct etiologic research, public health interventions, and policy advocacy aimed at understanding and addressing health inequities.

The goals of NWP are to: strengthen policy advocacy skills within local neighborhoods; extend community voices into the policy making arena; and impact policies aimed at creating healthy neighborhoods. In this presentation, we will describe and analyze the results from a process and outcome evaluation of a 4-session series of workshops carried out by NWP community and academic trainers in 7 neighborhoods in Detroit with approximately 225 participants – almost half of whom were youth. We will present findings from qualitative and quantitative data (workshop assessments, pre- and post-questionnaires), including the extent to which the trainings increased capacity of participants to carry out policy-related work (e.g., knowledge/skills gained, and further involvement in policy change activities); participants' assessment of training quality and usefulness; and recommendations for improvement. We will discuss lessons learned and implications for conducting and evaluating capacity building efforts to promote health through policy advocacy.