Online Program

Panel Discussion

In today's political, fiscal, and operating environments, achieving and maintaining Department of Defense (DoD) readiness goals is more challenging than ever before. As the United States has begun the process of reducing both its forces and defense spending, it has become more critical to define, measure, assess, and manage programs that support readiness across the Defense Department. To that end, evidence-based evaluation of the effectiveness of psychological health and traumatic brain injury (TBI) programs is a top DoD priority. Program evaluation is a multi-step process that should begin prior to program implementation. However, given the swift initiation and expansion of resources and programs within the Defense Department, many programs are lacking the integrated measures and framework that facilitate program evaluation. The areas covered during this special session will include a general introduction of rapid evaluation and its utility in comparing numerous psychological health and traumatic brain injury programs, measure and metric development to rapidly evaluate such program and finally, the adaptability of the rapid program evaluation process to other government and non-government agencies. Reviewing and discussing these topic areas will provide session attendees with a greater understanding of rapid program evaluation being conducted in the Defense Department.

Session Objectives: 1. Describe rapid evaluation and its utility to evaluate and compare programs 2. Understand the need and challenge for common measure and metric selection across multiple programs 3. Describe the rapid evaluation process being conducted to evaluate PH and TBI programs within the Defense Department and its adaptability to other programs within a public health context

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)