238097 Evaluating policy and environmental approaches to obesity prevention: Lessons from the evaluation of Kaiser Permanente's Community Health Initiative

Tuesday, November 1, 2011: 10:30 AM

Pamela Schwartz, MPH , Community Benefit, Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, CA
Suzanne M. Rauzon, MPH, RD , Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and Health, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
The Kaiser Permanente (KP) Community Health Initiative (CHI) is a program-wide strategy for improving the health of communities served by KP. The thematic focus is on "Healthy Eating, Active Living" (HEAL) - promoting improvements in nutrition and physical activity and reductions in overweight/obesity. The CHI intervention approach is to use environmental and policy changes to promote population-level improvements in levels of physical activity and proportions of the population eating a healthy diet. Thirty communities in five KP regions are currently implementing CHI. Findings will be presented from a comprehensive, cross-site evaluation covering the five years of CHI implementation (2006-2011). Evaluation methods include baseline and follow-up population-level surveys of youth and adults, and documentation of community programmatic and environmental changes taking place as a result of CHI. This presentation will provide an overview of the design for the CHI cross-site evaluation, describe policy and environmental changes taking place in the CHI communities, and present population-level findings and evaluation lessons learned.

Learning Areas:
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Program planning
Public health or related public policy
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Describe an approach to evaluating community health initiatives targeting policy and environmental change. Describe methods for assessing population-level health status. Identify challenges and lessons learned for the evaluation of a complex, multi-site community health initiative.

Keywords: Evaluation, Policy/Policy Development

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: NA

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am qualified to present because I oversee the evalaution of Kaiser Permanente's Community Health Initiative
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.