Evaluating policy, system and environmental change in an urban Latino community: A case study of Pima County, AZ

In 2010, the Pima County Health Department received a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant to increase physical activity and improve nutrition in Pima County through a broad spectrum of community agencies representing education, urban planning, agriculture, and health and human services. The strategies employed by these agencies to institute policy, systems and environmental changes are known as MAPPS strategies that target (M)edia, (A)ccess, (P)oint of decision information, (P)rice reduction, and (S)upport Services. Pima County CPPW efforts target public policy and media promotion on a county level, while on a community/organizational level they target neighborhoods, the built environment, food systems, schools, worksites, faith-based, and out-of-school care. Integrated efforts at the community and organizational levels are utilized to generate the greatest impact on targeted health disparate communities - most of which are urban and largely Latino. Complementary county-level efforts encourage an overall shift in public policy that will support and sustain a healthy county.

The CPPW evaluation team at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health utilizes a participatory model of evaluation in which all key partners and the evaluators are directly involved in the evaluation process. It is a mutual learning process which relies upon partner expertise to define and refine program outcomes and indicators, thus increasing the likelihood that evaluation findings are relevant to the priorities of the program are integrated into ongoing program planning. Innovative strategies for evaluating policy, system and environmental change and preliminary short-term and intermediate outcomes will be presented.