205556 Increasing access to care, and promoting healthy lifestyles by a reopened clinic on the Navajo Reservation: A community-academic partnership improves monitoring and evaluation for long term sustainability

Monday, November 9, 2009: 11:15 AM

Jillian Fry, MPH , Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Scholar, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD
Marina Elliott, CNA , Navajo Mission Health Center, Navajo Lutheran Mission, Rock Point, AZ
Fannie Fonseca-Becker, DrPH , Director, J&J Community HealthCare Scholars Program, and Sr. Research Associate, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Background: The Navajo Lutheran Mission (NLM) is located in a designated Medically Underserved Area (MUA) within the Navajo Nation. With funding from the Johnson & Johnson Community HealthCare Program, the NLM has reopened a health care clinic which has been closed for a decade. With the newly added capacity to provide regular medical care and wellness programs comes the need to evaluate the services provided.

Methods: Through a participatory approach, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) has trained NLM staff to design and conduct an evaluation program using a conceptual framework of activities and intended outcomes. Based on this framework, the partners created measures of program implementation and effectiveness, in addition to a data management system using Epi Info.

Results: Halfway through a two year collaboration, the NLM's capacity to conduct program evaluation and use the results to make programmatic improvements has increased. This was achieved through the utilization of specific evaluation skills, including creation of a conceptual framework of program activities, development of appropriate indicators to measure effectiveness, and data collection, management and analysis.

Conclusion: Partnerships between community organizations and academic institutions provide a valuable opportunity to increase the sustainable in-house capacity for program evaluation and to provide increased understanding of key determinants essential for improving the access to and quality of medical services for Navajos living in MUAs.

Learning Objectives:
1. Describe the benefits of using a conceptual framework as a basis for program evaluation. 2. List three challenges arising in participatory research. 3. Obtain publicly available software and support materials for data management, analysis and presentation.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the student collaborator on the project. I am responsible for providing training and technical assistance to the staff of the Navajo Lutheran Mission Clinic.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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