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Engaging the Community in a Learning Framework: Highlights from a Place-Based Building Healthy Communities Initiative
Methods: Approaches to facilitating learning communities include: 1) Community residents, BHCLB steering committee members, and organizational partners engaging in a process to define resident power, establish measurement indicators, and develop a survey. 2) Results from evaluation data collection are shared with involved BHCLB members using informal debriefing dialogue, and next steps are formulated from within respective workgroups. 3) TCE grantees participated in small group discussions about desired approaches to creating evaluation feedback loops that maximize learning among agencies and residents. 4) Piloting a workshop to assist residents and community stakeholders in advancing their skills in planning meaningful objectives for community campaigns and evaluating progress. 5) Regular “breakfast clubs” are held where community partners gather for informal roundtable discussions to reflect on thought-provoking literature, current events or policies, and BHC-related evaluation findings.
Results: Progress has been made in bringing community members together, and participants have provided positive feedback. BHCLB is exploring new methods for expanding its learning communities.
Conclusion: Learning communities provide a unique forum to reflect on BHC strategies, maximize learning, adapt and refine approaches. Additionally, innovative ideas and enthusiasm are coalesced to create a shared vision among community partners.
Learning Areas:
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practiceSystems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Formulate an understanding of differences between traditional evaluation approaches and approaches that value learning as the primary objective for evaluating activities and growth.
Demonstrate how meaningful learning communities can be constructed with residents and other community stakeholders to inform community-based research and evaluation.
Keyword(s): Community-Based Partnership & Collaboration, Evaluation
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have 20 years of experience in public and community health research and evaluation, with particular interest in racial and ethnic health disparities, health impacts of discrimination, and other social determinants of health. I received specific training on community-based evaluation and qualitative data collection and analysis during my doctoral program. I have served on the Learning and Evaluation Team for Building Healthy Communities: Long Beach for the last three years.
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.