Building capacity to measure the effectiveness of community health care organization's obesity prevention interventions among Latino children

Childhood obesity affects disproportionally low income minority populations including Latino children. Obese children are at higher risk of becoming obese adults and to develop related chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Community health care organizations (CHCO) serving Latinos can play a vital role in the prevention of obesity among Latino children through collaborations with schools, main caregivers and the community, but often lack the in-house capacity to evaluate their program's outcomes. Being able to demonstrate effectiveness is crucial for these program's long-term sustainability. An innovate program that partners CHCOs and academia with funding from the Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Program, is helping bridge this evaluation gap.

Methods: CHCOs implementing chilhood obesity prevention programs and doctoral students (guided and supervised by a faculty member) are paired for a period of 2 ½ years to improve the CHCOs capacity in evaluation. This is accomplished through participatory methodologies specifically developed to provide a standardized approach that can be adapted to the needs of individual CHCOs. Results: At the end of the 2 ½ years, CHCO program staff is able to design an evaluation plan to measure the chilhood obesity prevention intervention, including goals, SMART objectives and identify and organize into a conceptual framework the key indicators needed to measure their program's outcomes. The staff also gained the skills necessary for the development of data collection tools, database creation as well as data entry and analysis. The staff also gains skills to present data in a clear and concise manner.

Conclusions: CHCO/academic partnerships are effective in increasing the monitoring and evaluation capacity of community health care organizations implementing childhood obesity prevention initiatives.