Assessing public health advocacy capacity: Lessons from the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Tobacco Policy Change program

Policy change is a hallmark of current public health tobacco control efforts. Tobacco Policy Change is a major multi-site national program from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that supports state and local tobacco control advocacy activities. A unique feature of the program is the priority given to funding diverse tobacco control advocacy partnerships that incorporate community organizing and social justice principles. The ultimate goal of the program is to create sustainable community partnerships that increase capacity for ongoing tobacco control and public health advocacy. Evaluation of such advocacy programs employing comprehensive perspectives presents a number of challenges. We report here on a framework for evaluating the Tobacco Policy Change program that synthesizes concepts and methods from the emerging field of advocacy evaluation with public health models of community collaboration and capacity building. We discuss challenges involved in the conceptualization and measurement of advocacy program structures, processes and outcomes, and examine approaches for dealing with these issues. Methods are suggested for evaluating programs with multiple grantees that each have a unique program strategy and model. We also present a format for evaluating the role of the funding agency in shaping program development and building project capacity and discuss the importance of incorporating this element into program models. The Tobacco Policy Change evaluation framework serves as a model for assessment of other community-based advocacy partnerships seeking to change the policy environment affecting tobacco use and other public health problems.