224154 Assessing Community-based Participatory Research: Evaluating the National Cancer Institute's Community Networks Program to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CNP)

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 : 11:24 AM - 11:42 AM

John Foster-Bey, MPA, MBA , Evaluation Research, CSR, Incorporated, Arlington, VA
Tiffani Jeffries , Evaluation Research, CSR, Inc., Arlington, VA
Marcia Salazar, MA , CSR, Incorporated, Arlington, VA
Timothy Willis, PhD , CSR, Incorporated, Arlington, VA
Lynn Disney, PhD , Evaluation and Research, CSR, Incorporated, Arlington, VA
Leslie Cooper, PhD, MPH, BSN, RN , Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, USPHSCC, Bethesda, MD
Emmanuel A. Taylor, MSc, DrPH , Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, National Cancer Institute (NCI), Rockville, MD
The National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD) established the Community Networks Program (CNP) to address cancer health disparities in underserved and minority racial/ethnic populations. Funding was awarded to 25 grantees to establish community-based education, research, and training programs for a five year period. The CNP grantees chosen represented a wide range of racial and ethic groups experiencing cancer health disparities as well as diverse geographic areas. The project was implemented in three phases: 1. developing infrastructure and building capacity, 2. conducting community-based participatory research activities, and 3.building sustainability and credibility.

Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) initiatives such as the CNP pose a number of challenges for traditional evaluation models. CBPR assumes that health research and interventions should conform to the specific needs and unique characteristics of each community. While all grantees were guided by the CNP's overall theory of change reflected in a set of program logic models, the CNP allowed each CNP site to craft cancer health initiatives that responded to the unique needs of its target community. Given this, the evaluation needed to account for the way site-specific strategies affected variations in outcomes. Moreover, because outcome measures for each CNP site were specific to the target community, they were not always the same even when addressing the same cancer health issue.

This session will describe the national outside evaluation of CNP and discuss how it addressed the challenges of evaluating a national initiative based on CBPR.

Learning Areas:
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice

Learning Objectives:
-Discuss the challenges of evaluating community-based participatory research models when applied to cancer health disparities research. -Explain the tension between evaluating common elements across a national sample of projects using CBPR in their cancer health disparities research and the need to capture the unique character of each project site. - Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of traditional approaches to evaluation when applied to CBPR and cancer health disparities.

Keywords: Evaluation, Community Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the project director and lead evaluator for the NCI Community Networks Program to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities
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.

Back to: 5097.0: Policy and Systems Strategies for Reducing Health Disparities and Improving Cancer Control