Bright Futures for Women's Health and Wellness (BFWHW) Initiative – Emotional Wellness Consumer Tools Evaluation & Findings

Background/Significance: The goals of the Bright Futures for Women's Health and Wellness (BFWHW) Initiative are to improve the health status of women by increasing the use of appropriate preventive services; empower women at all ages to seek preventive health services; increase practitioner utilization of evidence-based preventive health guidelines; integrate roles and influences of cultural and environmental knowledge and practice; and support community wide health promotion. Within the BFWHW Initiative is a set of emotional wellness tools designed for health care providers, adolescent girls, adult women, and community organizations. The tools are evidence-based, easy to read and understand for the target audience, and focus on self-esteem, finding balance and purpose, and connecting with others. In 2010, an intermediate evaluation was conducted among 569 adult and young adult women across 4 HRSA-funded grantees.

Objective/Purpose: To discuss the purpose of the evidence based BFWHW consumer tools, design and implementation of the evaluation, and final results. Methods: The evaluation examined tool dissemination, associated barriers and facilitators, consumer usage, preliminary outcomes of the tool on consumers' emotional well-being and health promotion behaviors and their willingness and comfort level with discussing emotional well-being with their provider.

Results: Preliminary findings from the evaluation indicate that using a “guided” approach that leverages the relationship between the consumer and the provider is an ideal approach for disseminating and discussing the tools.

Discussions/Conclusions: Evaluation findings can inform future tools development offering insights into effective strategies for disseminating the tools and ensuring that the tools resonate with the intended audience.