CDC's Healthy Communities Program: Tools and Techniques for Evaluating Policy, Systems, and Environmental Change Strategies

Policy, systems, and environmental changes are vital for addressing community health as they lead to population-level change and sustainable community improvements. CDC's Healthy Communities Program (HCP) funds communities to implement policy, systems, and environmental changes that facilitate people being more physically active, eating a healthy diet, and avoiding tobacco use and exposure. Evaluation of these strategies is often identified as a barrier to their use. Evaluation difficulties include the need to measure results throughout multiple stages (interim outcomes, policy goals, and long-term impacts); measuring and tracking policy, systems, and environmental change strategies through development, implementation, and enforcement; and receiving input from partners throughout the policy advocacy and implementation process. This session will describe the multiple evaluation methods used by HCP and its funded communities to address those identified difficulties. Methods described will include the Community Health Assessment and Group Evaluation (CHANGE) tool developed by HCP to assess the need for, prioritize, and track implementation of policy, systems, and environmental changes; a Management Information System used by HCP to collect consistent data from local communities and national networks; and progress reports and additional data collection opportunities used to receive ongoing qualitative and quantitative updates from all partners. This session will also describe how information and data gained from these sources is combined and triangulated to measure program implementation processes and effectiveness, and provide an overall evaluation of the policy, systems, and environmental changes implemented by HCP communities.